The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty - Pearson

Part 1 Marketing now…2.1Unilever’s Dove brand is on a mission to change all of this. Its Campaign forReal Beauty hopes to do more than just sell Dove beauty creams and lotions. Itaims to change the traditional definition of beauty – to ‘offer in its place a broader,healthier, more democratic view of beauty’. It tells women to be happy just the waythey are. ‘In Dove ads,’ says one advertising expert, ‘normal is the new beautiful.’It all started with a Unilever study that examined the impact on women of asociety that narrowly defines beauty by the images seen in entertainment, inadvertising and on fashion catwalks. The startling result: only 2 per cent of 3,300women and girls surveyed in 10 countries around the world considered themselvesbeautiful. Unilever’s research revealed that among women ages 15 to 64 worldwide,90 per cent want to change at least one aspect of their physical appearanceand a staggering 67 per cent withdraw from some life-engaging activities becausethey are uncomfortable with their looks.Unilever concluded: ‘It is time to redefine beauty!’ ‘We believe that beautycomes in different shapes, sizes and ages,’ says Dove marketing director PhilippeHarousseau. ‘Our mission is to make more women feel beautiful every day bybroadening the definition of beauty.’ Unilever launched the Dove Campaign forReal Beauty globally in 2004, with ads that featured candid and confident images ofreal women of all types (not just actresses or models) and headlines that promptedconsumers to ponder their perceptions of beauty. Among others, it featured fullbodiedwomen (‘Oversized or Outstanding?’), older women (‘Gray or Gorgeous?’;‘Wrinkled or Wonderful?’) and a heavily freckled woman (‘Flawed or Flawless?’).In 2005, the campaign’s popularity skyrocketed as Dove introduced six new ‘realbeauties’ of various ethnicities and proportions, in sizes ranging from 6 to 14.These women appeared in magazines and on billboards wearing nothing but theirunderwear and big smiles, with headlines proclaiming, ‘Let’s face it, firming thethighs of a size 2 supermodel is no challenge,’ or ‘New Dove Firming: As Tested onReal Curves.’In 2006, Unilever took the Dove campaign to a new level, with a ground-breakingspot in the mother of all ad showcases, the US Super Bowl. This ad did not featurecurvy, confident women. Instead, it presented young girls battling self-esteemissues – not models but real girls picked from schools, sports leagues and GirlScout troops. In the ad, one dark-haired girl ‘wishes she were a blond’. Another‘thinks she’s ugly’. A pretty young redhead ‘hates her freckles’. The ad alsopromoted the Dove Self-Esteem Fund, which supports, among other causes,the Girl Scouts’ Uniquely Me programme. It urged viewers to ‘get involved’ at thecampaignforrealbeauty.com website.74