Dove

Unilever is a leading global manufacturer of packaged consumer goods, with annual revenues of $50 billion. Dove is a Unilever brand launched in 1957 and is one of America’s most recognizable brand icons. Dove accounts for about $2.5 billion of Unilever total annual revenue. In 2007, Dove was the world’s number-one “cleansing” brand in the health and beauty sector. By 2002, during the “Point of View” era, Dove began the “Campaign for Real Beauty” under the mission statement; “Dove’s mission is to make more women feel beautiful every day by broadening the narrow definition of beauty and inspiring them to take great care of themselves.” The positioning of the brand was to be unconventional when it came to the definition of women’s beauty and beauty care. During its “Functional Benefits” era, Dove differentiated itself by asserting that the Dove beauty bar was not technically soap. The Dove beauty bar contained high levels of natural skin moisturizers and dermatological studies found it milder than soap-based bars. Dove further differentiated itself by backing its “Campaign for Real Beauty” with scientific proof. Through the exploration of psychological studies on women, the brand was out to debunk the dream that most women can attain the elusive supermodel beauty. Prior to 2000, Unilever typically managed brands in a decentralized fashion. Each brand acted as a separate business, and it competed with its sibling company brands as well as the competitions’. Post 2000, responsibilities were split into Brand Development and Brand Building. Brand development was centralized in scope. Brand building was decentralized in scope according to major geographic regions in which Unilever operated. Brand managers were charged with bringing the brand to life and building brand equity. If I were Unilever, I would continue with Silvia Lagnado and Philippe Harousseau direction with their campaign, with a few exceptions. Scientific backing gives the brand credibility in the eyes of the modern customer. The brand also stacks up well against the world’s leading brands per Kevin Keller article, “The Brand Report Card”[1]. As an improvement, I would make my brand building, customer-centric and I would assign Brand Managers to Customer-Segment Managers, as proposed by Rust, et al[2]. The key is to make customer equity central by having the Customer-Segment Manager allocate resources to the Brand Manager. This also allows tighter focus of brand building which enhances the clarity of the value of the brand in the customers’ eyes.[3] To avoid undermining the core message and tainting the brand image, I would send a clear and focused message about the use of blogs, as promotional media, in relation to the brand as advised in the Singh, et al article[4]. This would help in avoiding conflicting messages about the brand. I would take back control in the blogging efforts and make a conscious effort to steer blog conversation in a direction that paints the brand in favorable light. ----------------------- [1] Kevin Lane Keller, The Brand Report Card (Harvard Business Review, 2000) 25 [2] Roland T. Rust, Valarie A. Zeithaml, and Katherine N. Lemon (Harvard Business Review, Customer-Centered Brand management) 5 [3] Roland T. Rust, Valarie A. Zeithaml, and Katherine N. Lemon (Harvard Business Review) 6 [4] Tanuja Singh, Liza Weron-Jackson, Joe Cullinane (Kelley School of Business, 2008)289