Dove__Real_Beauty_Campaign

Dove: The Real Beauty Campaign In 2004, Dove launched a very successful campaign called “The Campaign for Real Beauty” which featured real women, not models, advertising Dove’s firming cream. The campaign was started after Dove conducted a global study on beauty. The study called, “The Real Truth About Beauty: A World Report,” used quantitative data collected from an international study of 3,200 women from ten different countries. Through the study, Dove aimed to explore the relationship women have with beauty, determine how women define beauty, learn the level of satisfaction with women’s beauty and the impact beauty has on the well-being of women. Through two key findings of the study, Dove was able to confirm that the narrow definition of beauty is having a significant impact on the self-esteem of women today. They discovered that only two percent of women around the world consider themselves beautiful and 81 percent of women in the United States strongly agree that “the media and advertising set an unrealistic standard of beauty that most women can’t ever achieve.” 1 In the first phase, The Dove campaign was communicated to the public through a variety of print and television advertisements, a website, workshops and short films. The advertisements focused on promoting real, natural beauty, in an effort to offset the unrealistically thin and unhealthy archetypal images associated with modeling. The sentiment is articulated quite strongly through their campaign slogan “real women have curves”1 as well as the website which features quotes from each of the “Campaign for Real Beauty” models. In the advertisement, six women all show their happiness and acceptance of their own body shape by laughing and smiling throughout the commercial. This gives more confidence to the consumers with non-standardized body shape, and it also encourages them to see their beauty. One of the women, Sigrid Sutter is quoted saying, “truth is beauty,” while another Staci Nadeau claims “It’s time that all women felt beautiful in their own skin.” According to a press release, Dove wants “to make women feel more beautiful every day by challenging today’s stereotypical view of beauty and inspiring women to take great care of themselves.” The use of women “of various ages, shapes and sizes” is designed “to provoke discussion and debate about today’s typecast beauty images.”2 The campaign became hugely successful in both its reach and impact. The six women in the U.S. ads were featured in national television spots, magazine ads, print ads and billboards in major urban markets in North America. The campaign and its influence on body image were the subject of much commentary in newspapers and blogs, receiving mostly praise and lots of attention. The Real Beauty models also received their share of the spotlight appearing on numerous television programs including “Oprah,” “The Today Show,” and “The View.” In February 2007, the second phase of the campaign was introduced with Dove using advertisements that targeted women 50 years and older. Currently, the campaign focuses on young girls and self-esteem. For this part of the campaign, Dove created self-esteem workshops and online self-esteem tools for mothers and daughters. In addition, Dove has created online films such as “Evolution,” “Onslaught” and “True Colors” which was a highly regarded commercial during the 2006 Super Bowl. “Evolution” had an enormous impact globally: it has been viewed more than 20 million times online and seen by more than 300 million people in various channels of distribution, including news coverage. The results of this campaign were overwhelming from the consumers and the media. In the first six months of the campaign, sales of Dove’s firming products increased 700% in Europe and in the United States, sales for the products in the advertisements increased 600% in the first two months of the campaign. In 2004, global sales surpassed $1 billion, exceeding company expectations. Dove’s public relations company built in news coverage for Asia with the Dove “models” appearing in 618 different newspaper clippings with a circulation of 139 million. By the end of 2005, sales in the Asian-Pacific market increased from 19% to 26%.3 In the United States, the campaign got free advertising space from media coverage on national television shows reaching 30 million daytime television viewers. These shows included The Oprah Winfrey Show, which included the campaign everyday for a week, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Today Show, The View and CNN Dove and Ogilvy have won awards for this campaign. In 2006 it was awarded a Grand EFFIE, which honors the most significant achievement in marketing communications effectiveness. They also won the two Grand Prix Cannes Advertising Awards in 2007. 4 As previously explained, the campaign was not simply seen in print ads for magazines or a commercial on TV, but it was also a part of a multi-faceted project. Direct selling could be seen through the workshops conducted with women of all ages, backgrounds, and ethnicities. There were company members recruiting women on the streets throughout the United States to participate and also giving away free samples of Dove products. This is a great example of promoting awareness for an issue while also creating terrifically positive brand awareness. Women now associated a optimistic, forward-thinking message with Dove and all of their products. Dove went even a step further by launching an interactive website and a Facebook page for the campaign. Women could get involved in every way possible. The website has a blogs section, topics section, and discussion section in which women are able to participate in several forms of two-way communication, making them feel extremely involved and important. The blog slogan is, “What do all of these women have in common' A desire to share, connect and talk about real beauty.”1 Women could connect with one another through Dove and through their stories. The website also offers sweepstakes, coupons, free samples, and exclusives. There are some critics of the campaign, however. They claim that Dove, just like any other multi-million dollar company, was not necessarily concerned with women’s well-being as much as they were concerned with their sales.5 Their argument is that at the end of the day, they created this campaign to promote their product: a skin-firming, cellulite reducing cream. As the company was saying “be yourself,” they were also saying “buy this product to improve yourself.” Critics believe this to be a confusing message which ultimately shows they are only interesting in creating an “off-beat” advertisement in order to make more money. Whether the company’s intention was to raise market share or to actually raise awareness, there is no doubt that the campaign was pure genius. Dove strategically targeted a demographic of women who are tired of stick-thin supermodels and the absurd expectations of our society. The refreshing campaign was about engendering debate and inspiring action. It persuaded opinion formers to get talking about a soap brand, which is quite an achievement. Dove has created very positive brand reinforcement, as women now feel connected to the brand and the encouraging change that it represents.