The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty - Pearson

Part 1 Marketing now…2.1series of ads. It is promoting a philosophy, supported by a substantial advertisingbudget, the Dove Self-Esteem Fund and a website full of resources designed to buildthe self-esteem of women and young girls.Certainly, Unilever does have financial objectives for its Dove brand – mostconsumers understand and accept that. If women are not buying the message ofDove about the nature of real beauty, then they aren’t buying its products either. Butthe people behind the Dove brand and the Campaign for Real Beauty have noblemotives beyond sales and profits. According to Fernando Acosta, Dove vice-presidentof brand development, the bold and compelling mission of the Dove brand to redefinebeauty and reassure women ranks well beyond the issues of money: ‘You should seethe faces of the people working on this brand now,’ he says. ‘There is a real love forthe brand.’SOURCES: Theresa Howard, ‘Dove ad gets serious for super bowl’, USA Today (23 January 2006), accessed atwww.usatoday.com; Don Babwin, ‘Dove ads with “real” women get attention’, Associated Press Financial Wire(29 July 2005); Theresa Howard, ‘Ad campaigns tell women to celebrate how they are’, USA Today (7 August2005), accessed at www.usatoday.com; Pallavi Gogoi, ‘From reality TV to reality ads’, BusinessWeek Online(17 August 2005), accessed at www.businessweek.com; ‘Positioning: Getting comfy in their skin’, Brandweek(19 December 2005), p. 16; Patricia Odell, ‘Real girls’, Promo (1 March 2006), p. 24; ‘Beyond stereotypes:Rebuilding the foundation of beauty beliefs’ (February 2006), accessed at www.campaignforrealbeauty.com;Jeani Read, ‘Women modeling for Dove love challenging skinny stereotypes’, The Calgary Herald (15 May2006), p. C3; and information found at www.campaignforrealbeauty.com, December 2006; Tom Phillips,‘Everyone knew she was ill . . .’, The Observer (14 January 2007).In order to persuade customers to buy their brand rather than any other, manufacturerssometimes make claims that are not fully substantiated.The recent spate of food scares and the increasing popularity of functional food productsthat claim to have beneficial effects on consumer health have spurred the EuropeanCommission into action. Planned legislation would ban companies from using claims ‘thatmake reference to general, non-specific benefits to overall good health, well-being and normalfunctioning of the body’. So, slogans such as ‘90 per cent fat-free’ and ‘strengthens your body’snatural defences’ would be prohibited. According to the European Commission there is a need toensure that consumers are not fooled by information provided on the products. A fundamentalrequirement is that consumers are protected. The food industry is less than enthusiastic. Theywelcome regulations that would allow companies to use the same labelling across the EU, butfear that the Commission may be overstepping the mark. It may be easy to see why. The newregulations would mean that Nestlé LCI yoghurts, Danone Actimel drinkable yoghurt range andUnilever’s Latta margarine would not be able to claim to stimulate, help or strengthen yourbody’s natural defences. Neither would Kellogg’s be allowed to use the little symbols to indicatethe health benefits that it puts on cereals in its range. 1076