Dove: Real Beauty Campaign

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Owned by Unilever, Dove is a company that sells beauty products, selling soaps and shampoos. In 2004, they launched a campaign that is still going on today. The campaign is called The Real Beauty campaign and targets women and the way they view themselves. Their first phase were billboards and magazine advertisements featuring pictures of women who weren’t stereotypical models with check boxes next to them saying “fat or fab?” or “wrinkled or wonderful?” and had a number underneath for consumers to call in and vote. The next year, Dove released another advertisement featuring six women with different body shapes and ethnicities in just white undergarments. All the women looked very happy and confident, trying to prove that thin isn’t the only type of beautiful. In 2006, Dove released a video on Youtube that completely changed everything. Just a year after the creation of Youtube, Dove’s video exploded onto the scene. The video showed an average looking women being transformed into the model we see on billboards, this happened through tons of makeup and hair doing and also an extensive amount of photo manipulation.

In 2007, Dove released a Super Bowl commercial showing different little girls and the things they already didn’t like about their looks and ended by saying “ Lets make peace with beauty.” This commercial reached an estimated audience of 89 million viewers according to (www.Dove.us) . Dove also started the Self Esteem Fund, which helped fund programs to educate girls and women about their own self-esteem and definition of beauty.

Dove’s third phase in the campaign focused on older women. This took place after Dove’s global study showed 91% of women between the ages of 50-64 believe society needs to change its outlook on aging of women. Dove brought in photographer Annie Leibovitz to photograph these older women and their natural beauty. They also released a product called Dove Pro-Age, which meant they were for aging, and that concept was unheard of in today’s beauty driven society. (Bahadur,2014)

In 2010, Dove started the Movement for Self-Esteem. This program encouraged women to help the next generation understand real beauty. They also partnered with the Girl Scouts of the U.S.A, the Boys & Girls Club of America, and Girls Inc. to create activities to raise young girls self-esteem. According to Doe.us they have reached over 7 million girls so far and aim to reach 15 million girls by 2015.

The campaign all started when Dove realized they were starting to be overshadowed by competitor companies; so, their Public Relation Firm. Edelman took a survey and realized only 2 percent of women viewed themselves as beautiful. From that survey the Real Beauty campaign was born.

The campaign didn’t go on long before people started to question the authenticity of Dove’s aims. The main reason for that is that Unilever also owns brands like Axe, which always objectifies women in their commercials (Bahadur , 2014). Another product of Unilever’s is a skin whitening crème for African Americans. (Bahadur,2014) How were women supposed to trust Dove’s intentions when its owner endorses those items? Some critics accused Unilever of feeding off of women’s insecurities by creating this whole Real Beauty campaign while selling cellulite cream. Dove hasn’t released their sales numbers but Unilever suggest sales have been boosted because of the campaign. Jennifer Bremer, the brand director of skin cleansing at Unilever states “ We believe that conversation leads to brand love, and brand love leads to brand loyalty,” she also admitted “ That’s obviously a positive for us not just in the power of the brand, but also ultimately in sales.” (Bahadur, 2014)

Due to the campaigns success, companies like Pantene and Always have joined the women empowerment train. Pantene’s campaign “Labels Against Women” tries to get people to understand that they should not judge a women based on her looks. Always now has a campaign called “Fight like a Girl” that’s mission is to make doing things like a girl not a bad thing.

Dove’s current progress on the campaign includes multiple releases of videos via Youtube and you can also find a whole page dedicated to the campaign on Dove’s website. Their video for 2013 called Real Beauty Sketches shows how an artist draws women based off of their own descriptions, then how someone else describes them. Also in 2013, Dove added to their campaign a mission to help “make girls unstoppable”, that helps young girls gain and keep the confidence to continue the activities their interested in. With the help of Lisa Ling, Dove plans to reach 15 million girls by 2015 according to www.unileverusa.com. According to Dove 6 in 10 girls quit sports because how they felt about their appearance. (Loop, 2013)

Their newest movement is called Selfie, and allows women to upload their selfies onto the Dove webpage. The webpage also offers a space to explain what “#Beautyis” to them. Another slogan Dove has been using lately refers to women looking in mirrors. On their Facebook page the cover photo shows a women looking skeptical at herself in the mirror and says “When was the last time you smiled back?” The page has 22,624,143 likes. Most of their posts include questions about experiences from their fans and Dove replies almost all of those who comment.

Some critics say the Real Beauty campaign in no way broke the traditions of our beauty-driven society, but reinforced it (Lyons, 2013). Dove’s campaign doesn’t say beauty comes from the inside nor does it say beauty isn’t important, it just states women should feel beautiful, and try not to compare themselves to super models. On the other hand many women state they enjoyed the more realistic figures and looks of Dove’s models and that the definition of beauty has become almost impossible to achieve and also gave a self-esteem boost to women who saw Dove’s ads (Proudfoot, 2010).

Maybe the campaign didn’t complete change societies infatuation with beauty, but it did put Dove’s name back onto the playing field. Even though Dove will not release their sales statistics, We’re sure they have skyrocketed since 2004. I would definitely consider the campaign a success, not only did it get people talking about Dove, the campaign is still going on 10 years later!

The campaign was so successful it was launched in 19 other countries in 2013 and was recorded to reach over 33 million women in 2012.(n.a., 2013) A major part of Dove’s success was how it went in phases; the first phase targeting the middle aged women, the second moms and the future of young girls self esteem, then older women and how aging might not be a bad thing, and finally targeting young girls and the next generation. Each phase impacted a different variety of women, then the most recent asking all women to be role models for young girls so they don’t have self-esteem issues, as they become women. The Dove Real Beauty campaign was exactly what any company/advertising firm could have hoped for.

 

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