Gray Away Hair Root Concealer — A Marketing Review

Don’t you just hate it when a massive area of gray hair suddenly becomes visible in the parting of your hairline?

Don’t you just wish that there was an easy and cheap way to temporarily hide it, making the coloring look natural in the end?

Wouldn’t you like to give the middle finger to those pricy salons who actually charge you money to style your hair?

Can cats and dogs really read our minds?

Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was something resembling a can of spray paint that could quickly and magically turn your gray hair roots into the same color as the rest of your hair?

Did somebody say spray paint?

Wait.  What was that?  Something that looks like spray paint and changes the color of your hair’s roots?

Gray Away official website — www.GrayAway.com

Ladies and gentlemen, I present you with Gray Away.

A little while ago I saw a product advertisement that looked exactly like that last question — something looking like spray paint that colored gray roots in your hair.  Then again, that “little while ago” was also the last time I noticed the commercial on television.

Before I go any further, it’s best if you visit the official Gray Away website and see the TV commercial.  Right now the commercial is only available on the company’s website and not other sites like YouTube.

Did you see the commercial?  Great!  Let’s start discussing the website and TV commercial.  If you lied and didn’t really see the commercial, take the couple of minutes and go see it, smack yourself in the head for lying not only to me but also yourself, and then proceed with the rest of this article.

Ready?

Let’s start with the Gray Away website.

As a whole, I like the Gray Away website.  It’s colorful, informative, and it does a pretty good job of selling the product.  The order form blends in smoothly with the rest of the website.

As nice as the website looks, there are a couple of areas that need some attention.

Gray Away official website — a few errors

One area of the website that needs some attention is the bullet list.

First of all, each complete (more or less) sentence should really have some punctuation at the end of it.  It looks sloppy when some sentences have punctuation while others don’t.

Second, “blond” in the first sentence should really be “blonde.”  While the spelling in the bullet point is technically correct (they use “blonde” throughout the remainder of the website), the vast majority of people add an “E” to the end of the word when speaking about women’s hair color.  “Blond” typically refers to a man’s hair color.  The TV commercial does say that men can also benefit from the product, but when you see the product, the commercial, and the website, we ALL know that this product is being geared towards women.  Therefore “blonde” is the way to go . . . for spelling.  😉

The third, and final, issue with this bullet point listing is with the typo in the final sentence.  People, proofread your websites before they are published, especially if it involves an order form and you expect to collect money from your customers.

Gray Away official website — duplication

Another part of the website that may require some attention is at the very bottom of the page.  It’s rather odd that the text underneath the offer and at the bottom of the page are duplicates — word-for-word — complete with the odd spacing between some of the words.  I get it that some of the text down there is rather useful for SEO purposes and the general flow of the website, but having it word-for-word is useless and only shows that the people behind the website didn’t put complete effort into their work.

Yeah, yeah.  I’m just nitpicking here, right?  Nobody really cares about how a company’s website looks, right?

Let’s take a look at the TV commercial and try to infer just what they, the marketing team, is trying to sell us, the everyday sheeple.

Gray Away TV commercial — At first I was like OMG! and then I was like NO FREAKIN’ WAY!

We’ve all been in this situation, right?

One moment you’re just chatting away on the phone about some of the most challenging topics in the history of mankind, and then all of a sudden it’s time to hit the road.  All of those precious moments spent on the phone discussing the works of Shakespeare or even the theory of using ion thrusters for long-distance space travel could have been used checking yourself in the mirror one last time.  I mean, like, you know, don’t you just hate it when that happens?

Gray Away TV commercial — My God!  Who is that hideous woman in the mirror?

Oh no!  Just when you thought that your hair color was perfect, along come those gray spots in the roots again!  At such critical timing, too!  If only there was a quick way to disguise the fact that parts of your hair look so bad that the sight of it could cause horses to vomit.

Can somebody help this poor woman so that she’ll be set for the last minute invitation for tonight’s party?  Or is she destined to walking around with a paper bag over her head?

Gray Away TV commercial — It’s gray hair!  Noooooooo!

One moment you’re on top of the world preparing for a job interview, and the next the bedroom mirror nearly shatters from the shocking discovery of unwanted gray hair.  Its presence alone could mean absolute failure in the job interview.

If only there was enough time to use a fancy hair coloring product or make a quick visit to the local salon.  Time is ticking and the traffic is slowly building.  There MUST be a quick solution to this sudden gray hair problem!

Gray Away TV commercial — Just smile and spray away the gray!

Smiling the whole time and not missing a beat, the Gray Away was generously sprayed into the gray area of hair, transforming those hideous patches of discoloration into the same color as the rest of the hair.  Just like that the gray has been covered instantly!

Gray Away TV commercial — The fantastic hairdo saved the interview!

Smiles are all around as it’s implied that the woman’s fantastic hairdo without a speck of gray hair hired her for the job, and not her personality, education or background.  We can only assume that the Gray Away’s temporary effects worked long enough to last throughout the entire job interview.

Gray Away TV commercial — The digital graying of Photoshop?

Next in the commercial we have an obligatory before and after shot of a woman who supposedly used Gray Away.

On the left side the woman is looking down, most likely sadden on the hideous discoloration throughout most of her hair — not just in her hairline.  Notice the massive section of gray hair along with blonde patches mixed with the primary brunette color.  To me, it seems surprising that an “average” person’s hair could look that bad with discoloration.  It almost looks somebody had fun with a computer graphic program and digitally altered the person’s photo.

On the right side the person is now smiling, no doubt significantly happier that the “sudden grandma look” has been temporarily disguised.  It wasn’t treated with one of those fancy hair coloring kits sold at a salon, but merely temporarily disguised with this product.  It’s kind of interesting that the white and blonde patches of hair are still visible despite what we assume was a generous spraying of Gray Away.

Gray Away TV commercial — No dying or being flaky on this hot date.

The Gray Away TV commercial specifically states that this product is a temporary solution, and it’s not a dye and won’t flake or stain.  Sketchier products would have downplayed those statements whereas the Gray Away commercial states it directly, both in voice and print.  I’ll give them credit for being up front and honest with the product despite some of the scenarios presented.

Gray Away TV commercial — Graying hair roots or a major dandruff problem?

Here we have another middle-aged woman who appears to have also been stricken with “sudden grandma look.”  It looks like she has a pretty significant area of hair discoloration.  She states that she doesn’t have the time or money to keep getting her hair colored.  The answer here is to temporarily color the gray hairline into something more acceptable for today’s society.  Let’s just hope that she doesn’t walk around on a windy day and expose more of that unwanted gray hair.

Grey Away TV commercial — Oooh, that gray hair makes me look even older!

In one of the most extreme examples yet of “sudden grandma look,” this woman has finally decided to change that massive amount of gray hair and look younger again.  Was her solution a pricy trip to a salon or using one of those fancy hair coloring kits?  Nope.  It’s Gray Away to the rescue!

Gray Away TV commercial — Transforming from Snow White back to being a blonde.

Again we’re seeing an incredible hair color transformation as this woman goes from looking like grandma back into looking like a middle-aged woman.  At what point are these people deciding that they suddenly have too much gray hair?  More importantly, how many “applications” of Gray Away did it take to color that much hair on her head?

Like one of the previous examples, it looks like the “before” image was digitally altered.  I find it hard to believe that a woman conscious of her looks and hairdo would let anywhere near that much gray and white hair to dominate her (presumably) natural blonde hair color.  What did she do, wear a wig or hide in a locked room for a month before taking the picture for the commercial?

Gray Away TV commercial — Mmmm.  This sweaty towel smells just like me!

After dominating the commercial with examples of women coloring their hair, along comes the lone example of a man using (and presumably approving) of the product.  While men can use this product, the way that the commercial is almost one hundred percent oriented towards woman tells you that the odds of men purchasing it are pretty slim.

The important thing here is that the product is apparently easy to use and the TV commercial claims that it’s sweat resistant, so it should last in the gym and during “other” sweaty moments.  Despite being sweat resistant, the TV commercial also claims that it ” . . . lasts until you wash it out.”

It’s a little weird the way that the TV commercial says that the Gray Away still works with a sweaty head but it can be washed away in a shower.  That seems like an oxymoron.

Gray Away TV commercial — Say NO! to those $100 salon visits!

Hair coloring at a salon costs how much?!?

Here’s the scare tactic where the marketers really want to see if you’re paying attention to current trends.  We know that TV commercials like this normally exaggerate “the other guys” (whether it’s a product, business, or alternate solution) as part shock and also as an artificial way to inflate the perceived value of the current product for sale.

We know that hair coloring at a salon normally doesn’t cost as much as what the TV commercial is claiming.  It can be expensive, just not expensive as claimed in the commercial.  Once they pop the ultra-low cost of this product on the screen, more people are going to see the comparison and jump to the conclusion that this must be a really great deal.

Another tactic of comparing Gray Away to a treatment at a salon is to also artificially create the illusion that this is more of a high quality product than originally believed.  It’s all part of a mind game by the marketers.  They want you to be thinking about the treatment and finished results you see after visiting your usual salon, and then using those same happy thoughts to thinking about how you would look after a quick “treatment” with Gray Away.  Again, they want you to see the same comparison between a visit to a salon and using a quick treatment of Gray Away.

That combination of artificially inflating the “value” of the product along with having people think of a similar result is a large driving force behind the sales of products like this.  This doesn’t mean that the product is necessarily bad.  It just shows that the marketing team is trying to use almost every trick in the book to sell the product.

Gray Away TV commercial — Make me an offer.

At the end of the TV commercial we’re hit with the sales pitch.  No as-seen-on-TV offer is complete without some sort of freebie.  Sure enough, the Gray Away promotion also includes a special hair volumizing spray.  Whatever.  When you factor in the shipping & handing for the “free” item, the total cost of Gray Away comes to $19.97 ($9.99 (Gray Away) + $4.99 S&H +$4.99 (S&H for “free” item)).

It’s interesting that the company is not offering a 100% satisfaction guarantee but rather a 100% color match guarantee.  Even I can see in some of the before-and-after images that the color doesn’t look exact for some of the women.

FINAL THOUGHTS

This was a somewhat difficult article to write as this product is completely unappealing to me.  I’m a guy and don’t go anywhere near salons or salon products.  Some guys use hair coloring products.  I don’t.

What caught my fascination was that the TV commercial for Gray Away made the product look like a can of spray paint.  It’s designed to temporarily change hair color, it comes in a few different colors, it works nearly instantly, and the application looks just like handling a small can of spray paint.  Throw in the usual (and what appear to be slightly exaggerated) too-good-to-believe examples, and there you go.

It wouldn’t have hurt if the TV commercial or even product website could have gone into more detail about how Gray Away actually works.  Not doing so puts the product into that “magic” category, making more consumers into skeptics rather than believers.

I wonder how many “applications” of Gray Away it took for each example in the commercial.

I also wonder if people with unwanted sections of gray hair would only treat what’s visible or if they would try to spray all of their head.  Doing so might be important on windy days or if you accidentally touch your hair and alter the hairline.

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All of the Gray Away commercial images were screenshots of the TV commercial available on the product’s website.  For more product information, please visit the company’s website, www.GrayAway.com.

RellimZone.com is not affiliated with Gray Away.