For years, an annual reader-voted beauty awards campaign at pharmacy chains like Guardian was a familiar seasonal fixture, with shoppers nominating and voting for their favourite skincare, haircare, and beauty products. That specific voting period is long past, but the format itself is worth looking back on, since a lot of brands still lean on similar reader-choice awards today.
Key points
- Reader-voted beauty awards reflect popularity and marketing reach as much as genuine product quality.
- A product winning an award does not automatically mean it suits your specific skin or hair.
- These campaigns were useful for discovering products you had not tried, if you treated the list as a starting point.
- The most useful part of any beauty awards list is using it to research, not to buy blindly.
What an annual pharmacy beauty vote was
Campaigns like this typically ran once a year, inviting shoppers to nominate and then vote for their favourite products across categories like skincare, haircare, and makeup, often with some kind of small incentive for taking part. The winning products would then get featured prominently in stores and in seasonal marketing for months afterward.
At the time, it functioned as a kind of informal, crowd-sourced review system in an era before online reviews were as easy to find and compare as they are now. For a lot of shoppers, it was a genuinely useful shortcut for narrowing down an overwhelming shelf of options into a shorter list worth considering.
The campaign also doubled as a bit of seasonal theatre for pharmacy chains, since a wall of "award winner" stickers gave stores an easy, low-effort way to freshen up their shelves without running a sale. Shoppers got a shortlist, and stores got a reason to talk about the same familiar bestsellers again for another year. For more restored pieces looking back at older beauty formats like this, the lifestyle archive keeps that kind of retrospective content in one place.
What this kind of voting format got right and got wrong
| What it did well | What it tended to miss |
|---|---|
| Surfaced genuinely popular, well-loved products | Popularity does not always mean a product suits your specific skin or hair type |
| Gave shoppers a simpler shortlist to consider | Bigger brands with more marketing reach tended to win more often, regardless of quality |
| Created a sense of community around shared favourites | Voting was rarely blind, so brand loyalty could shape results as much as actual performance |
None of this means reader-voted awards were meaningless. It means they were one useful data point among several, not a guarantee that a product was the objectively best option in its category.
Use this as a starting point, then adjust for your body, conditions and professional advice. A plan is useful only when it responds to you.
How to use any beauty awards list sensibly today
Whether you come across an old awards list or a current one, treat the winners as a shortlist to research further, not a final answer. Check whether the product suits your specific skin type, read a range of individual reviews rather than relying on the award alone, and consider whether the ingredients match what your skin currently needs.
If your skin reacts easily, it is worth introducing any newly discovered product slowly, one at a time, rather than switching your whole routine based on an award win. Our guide to sweat and skincare covers some of the basics of introducing new products without overwhelming reactive skin.
It also helps to remember that a product winning in one specific year says very little about whether it is still the best option available now, since formulas change and new competitors launch constantly.
What Guardian's old beauty-vote format still teaches shoppers today
Looking back, an annual reader-voted beauty award was really a popularity contest with genuinely useful byproducts: product discovery, a rough sense of what other shoppers liked, and a bit of seasonal fun around the beauty counter. It was never meant to be a scientific ranking, and treating it that way was always going to lead to some disappointment. Looking back on it now mostly brings a bit of nostalgia for a simpler, slower era of beauty shopping, before endless online reviews and video unboxings took over the same job.
If you want more restored beauty and lifestyle content like this, the lifestyle hub is where older SHAPE pages are being rebuilt with a bit more context. The real value in any beauty vote, then or now, was never the trophy. It was the shortlist it handed you to start your own research from.
Should I trust an award-winning product automatically?
Treat it as a helpful shortlist, not a guarantee. Whether a product suits you still depends on your own skin type and needs.
Why do bigger brands often win these votes?
Larger brands tend to have wider reach and more shoppers aware of their products, which can shape voting results regardless of product quality alone.
This article provides general education and is not a diagnosis or a substitute for personalised medical care. Stop exercise and seek appropriate help for severe, sudden or concerning symptoms.
Looking Back on Guardian's Annual Beauty Awards Voting Format: questions answered
Do reader-voted beauty awards still happen today?
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Similar reader-choice awards still run at various retailers and publications, though the specific historical Guardian campaign referenced here is no longer an active, current vote.
