CLINICALLY PROVEN
Every beauty claim, taken literally, and sold live like it’s 1993.
Make beauty advertising funny without making fun of beauty.
The brief I set myself. Fashion first, joke second, and no real brand ever named.
CLINICALLY PROVEN is an original fashion film series I created, wrote and directed as a personal project. Each episode is a live product demonstration on a 1993 home shopping channel, where the claim on the box comes true exactly as written. Nobody in the studio thinks any of this is strange. That’s the joke. Made with AI tools and directed by me, with no real brands, products or people. CPTV 8 is fictional.
Beauty runs on claims nobody pictures
In which every claim comes true exactly as written.
Lifting. Lengthening. Volumizing. Plumping. Every brand says them, every package prints them, and they’ve been repeated so often they’ve stopped meaning anything. After years of putting words like these on beauty campaigns, I wanted to take them at face value. No wink, no explanation. Just the claim, demonstrated live, with a completely straight face.
One film became a channel
In which every gag was strong enough to stand alone.
It began as a single fashion film: a run of beauty claims, each one demonstrated literally, back to back. Every gag could stand alone, so each scene became its own 15 second episode, a format that keeps going. I wondered if “clinic” read too medical, so I kept CLINICALLY PROVEN and gave the network its own name: CPTV, channel 8.
Today’s beauty, sold like 1993
In which the world is 1993 and the models are now.
Early 90s home shopping is the purest form of the beauty pitch: a live demo, a manicured hand pointing at the result, a countdown, a price that keeps dropping. I kept every one of those conventions and let the claim break the frame.
The recast
The first frames were period correct, and they read as a spoof of the 90s. So I recast. The set, host and lab coats stay 1993. The models are cast like a current campaign.
Terms and conditions
Set before anything was generated. The claim is demonstrated, never explained. Nobody thinks it’s strange. No product, no packaging, no brands. Graphics are built, never generated. The disclaimer never finishes.
15 seconds. Five beats. Every time.
In which once you’ve seen one, you know the rhythm.
A fixed template is what makes it a series rather than a set of one-off jokes. The intro card, the claim played studio wide, the close up proof, the sell, then static. The only thing left to enjoy is how far each claim goes.
The package
A red LIVE tag, always on. Nothing here is live. The CPTV 8 bug, top right. CALL NOW! on the freeze, a countdown from 00:54, the lower third, the price drop, a crawl of disclaimers and a VCR timestamp from October 1993.
A copy system, not a script
In which any claim in the beauty aisle slots straight in.
Each episode is assembled from four repeatable parts. A host line: “One [unit]. One! And she’s still [going].” A claim tag: CLINICALLY [RESULT] [NUMBER]*. A disclaimer: one specific joke, then “Results not typical. Results not possible.” And a price ladder: five dollars cheaper and one fewer left, every item.
Not a crop
In which every episode also airs in true 9:16.
Instagram and TikTok are watched on phones, so each wide shot is regenerated as a vertical composition and every graphic is rebuilt for the taller screen: the price box stacks above the lower third and the claim tag moves into the frame. The 4:3 master stays the broadcast version.
AI makes the frames. Direction makes the show.
In which every frame is checked by a human.
Every shot starts from one locked base prompt, so twenty episodes still look like one channel. Then the notes. Recast the models. Rebuild the intro in the show’s cleaner graphic language. Cut the promo slate. Fix the plumping gag: the first take inflated her chest instead of her lips, so it was reshot until only the lips change, then a close up where her neck disappeared was fixed too.
Discontinued
The all-90s cast. The asterisk logo. The promo slate. The glitch intro, too noisy. Product shots, never made: the claim is the product.
20 claims. One channel.
In which every claim has a gag, a look and a backdrop color before production starts.
The whole season was designed up front as style frames, one backdrop color per claim. Twenty episodes of fifteen seconds: five minutes of television.
Special programming
The Halloween special. Proof the format stretches: monster versions of beauty claims, five 15 second episodes, each storyboarded as two frames before any motion was generated.
Operators are standing by
In which the whole job fits in a 15 second spot.
CLINICALLY PROVEN is the whole job in miniature: an insight from inside the category, a world with rules, a recast that changed the idea, a channel identity, a copy system and a production pipeline one person can run at the speed of social. Episodes are live on Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn.
It’s also a pitch. A beauty brand confident enough to laugh at its own claims would stand out in a feed full of the same ones.