‘Campaign for Real Beauty’ by Dove!

It’s been a busy 10 days with my exams. While reading a case study for my exams, I came across the ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’ by Dove. I used to use Dove soap when I was a kid. Today, Dove has evolved from just a soap bar into a various range of beauty products. I came across their ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’, the campaign which revolutionised a woman’s beauty. Unilever, which owns Dove, partnered with Ogilvy & Mather to come up with the campaign which has changed the way we presume beauty. It was a very impressive campaign which actually paid more importance for the cause than to its product. I think it was a gamble which the brand director of Unilever and the account director of Ogilvy & Mather took, and was successful to an extent, especially with the last part of the campaign; Onslaught, stating ‘Talk with your daughter before the beauty industry dose’.

I have to agree I loved the campaign at the beginning. Everyone is beautiful and the entire thing shown in the media about the highly ‘photo-shopped’ zero-size model is not the reality. Before the launch of the campaign, Unilever hired a psychiatrist, Nancy Etcoff, and psychotherapist Suzy Orbach (who had treated Lady Diana Spencer) to understand how women look at their self-esteem and describe beauty. It was followed by a series of ads interacting with the consumers about ‘real’ beauty. A very strong media planning went into action to create the buzz of the campaign. At the end, it had PR strategies that lead to the combination of the whole campaign creation: ‘Dove Real Beauty Award’ and ‘the Dove self-esteem fund’. 

It’s been a good 7 years since the campaign was launched. Although the campaign was successful in terms of creating brand awareness, it had to be taken down due to many criticisms; the 98 year old lady shown in the ad was not an average looking 90+ lady. Also, Dove had a history of using palm oil in its products, which relates to deforestation in Indonesia. This issue was taken up by Greenpeace to run a campaign called Onslaught(er) as opposed to the Dove’s ‘Onslaught’(The reason I stopped using Dove products - Onslaught(er) worked on me). There was also the issue of Unilever being two-faced, especially with its brand Axe/Lynx which is known for using women as sex symbols. A successful campaign can be criticized, but it does create a sensation and awareness.