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Case Study: Dove’s “Real Beauty” Brand Campaign

Case Study: Dove’s “Real Beauty” Brand Campaign 6 min read

In the world of skincare, Unilever’s Dove has not only solidified its position with products promising moisture and softness but has also reshaped the beauty industry through its groundbreaking “Real Beauty” campaign, launched in 2004 . This article delves into the multifaceted facets of Dove’s campaign, exploring its inception, objectives, social impact, marketing mix analysis, key elements, pros and cons, and the profound long-term implications it has had on the brand and the beauty industry as a whole.

A Revolutionary Approach to Beauty Standards

Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign embarked on a revolutionary journey by challenging and redefining the prevailing beauty standards. Departing from the conventional models seen in beauty ads, Dove opted for authenticity, featuring real women of diverse body types, ages, and ethnicities. This bold move aimed not only to celebrate the natural beauty of women but also to inspire a global conversation on self-image and societal perceptions of beauty.

The Objectives: Beyond Skin Deep

The campaign’s objectives were multifaceted. Firstly, Dove sought to broaden the narrow beauty standards dictated by media and society, offering a more inclusive definition of beauty. Secondly, it aimed to stimulate a global conversation, urging people to reconsider their perceptions of beauty. Lastly, Dove sought to boost women’s self-esteem by featuring diverse women, fostering a positive self-image.

Impacting Society: Beyond Beauty Products

The social impact goals were evident from the outset – Dove aimed to change the narrative around beauty, inspiring women worldwide to embrace their unique beauty. Furthermore, the campaign sought to influence other brands and the advertising industry to adopt a more inclusive and realistic portrayal of women.

Analyzing the Marketing Mix

Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign serves as a stellar example of a well-executed marketing mix, strategically incorporating the four Ps – Product, Price, Place, and Promotion.

• Product : Beyond skincare, Dove sold an idea – a new definition of beauty that was inclusive and diverse.
• Price : The brand maintained its value-based pricing strategy, reinforcing the message that real beauty is not a luxury but a right accessible to every woman.
• Place : Widely available globally, Dove’s products reached a broad audience. The digital presence further expanded its global reach, making it a conversation transcending borders.
• Promotion : The campaign leveraged unconventional strategies, featuring real women across various mediums, from TV commercials to digital platforms.

Key Elements of Authenticity

The campaign’s authenticity lay in its use of diverse models and the introduction of the “inner goddess” concept. By showcasing real women of different ages, sizes, and ethnicities, Dove aimed to boost self-esteem and change the narrative around beauty.

Navigating Pros and Cons

While the campaign successfully shifted beauty ideals towards inclusivity, it faced criticism for inconsistencies, particularly concerning Unilever’s ownership of brands with contradictory messages. Instances of racial insensitivity in certain ads also sparked public outcry. Despite these challenges, the campaign significantly impacted the beauty industry and resonated positively with consumers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpaOjMXyJGk

Results and Outcome of the Campaign

Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign was not only a triumph in challenging traditional beauty standards but also an exceptional success in terms of its financial impact and long-lasting resonance. The results can be analyzed based on the information provided:

Free Media Exposure:

The campaign generated remarkable buzz, resulting in free media exposure worth 30 times Dove’s initial spend . This indicates the campaign’s extraordinary reach and effectiveness in capturing public attention.

Website Engagement:

The campaign’s website drew a substantial 1.5 million visitors . This high level of engagement suggests that people were actively seeking more information about the campaign, indicating a strong public interest and involvement.

Viral Videos:

Dove strategically released a series of viral videos that resonated with viewers. These videos aimed to showcase the self-critical nature of women regarding their appearance while highlighting their true beauty. The viral nature of these videos amplified the campaign’s impact and facilitated widespread conversation.

Inclusive Advertising:

Dove’s decision to feature women of all shapes and sizes in their underwear, with the tagline “ Tested on real curves ,” was a pivotal move . It challenged the conventional use of runway models in beauty advertisements and celebrated the diversity of everyday women. This approach resonated positively with the target audience, fostering a sense of representation and inclusivity.

Financial Impact:

The most tangible result of the campaign’s success was reflected in Dove’s finances. The company experienced a remarkable 10% increase in revenues within a single year. This substantial growth indicates not only a positive response from consumers but also the campaign’s effectiveness in driving sales.

Long-Term Sustainability:

The campaign’s enduring success is noteworthy, considering it is still running nearly 20 years later. This longevity underscores its sustained impact on Dove’s brand image and continued relevance in addressing societal perceptions of beauty.

Inspiring a Movement

The revolutionary impact of Dove’s campaign transcends the beauty industry. It has inspired other brands across various sectors, from lingerie with Aerie’s #AerieREAL campaign to cosmetics with CoverGirl’s #IAmWhatIMakeUp initiative. Even sports apparel, as seen in Nike’s ‘Better For It’ campaign, has embraced inclusivity, inspired by Dove’s groundbreaking initiative.

Conclusion: A Lasting Legacy

Dove’s Real Beauty campaign has left a lasting legacy in the marketing world, not only for its strategic approach but also for the profound impact it had on societal perceptions of beauty. The campaign’s success can be attributed to several key factors that set it apart from traditional marketing strategies.

Emotional Connection:

Dove’s ability to tap into people’s emotions played a pivotal role in the campaign’s success. By addressing a sensitive and prevalent issue – women’s self-image – Dove created a deep emotional connection with its audience. The campaign resonated with the insecurities many women face, fostering a sense of empathy and understanding.

Empowerment Over Exploitation:

Unlike some marketing campaigns that leverage fear, shame, or the desire to conform to societal standards, Dove chose a path of empowerment. The brand celebrated women for who they were at that moment, rejecting unrealistic beauty standards perpetuated by the media. This approach not only differentiated Dove from its competitors but also contributed to building a positive brand image.

Everyday Product Focus:

The decision to center the campaign around everyday products, such as soap and body wash, showcased Dove’s commitment to promoting realistic beauty standards in everyday life. This strategic choice allowed consumers to actively participate in promoting a new paradigm while purchasing products they regularly use. This broad appeal significantly contributed to the widespread success of the campaign.

Affordability and Accessibility:

Dove’s commitment to offering affordable and accessible products further amplified the impact of the Real Beauty campaign. By keeping prices reasonable and ensuring widespread availability in stores like Target, Walmart, and convenience stores, Dove made it easy for a diverse range of consumers to support the cause. This inclusivity ensured that the success of the campaign wasn’t limited to a specific demographic with higher purchasing power.

In conclusion, Dove’s Real Beauty campaign stands as a testament to the power of authenticity, empathy, and social responsibility in marketing. By addressing a societal issue with sensitivity and promoting positive change, Dove not only garnered customer loyalty but also contributed to a broader conversation about inclusivity and self-acceptance. The campaign’s impact transcended the realm of marketing, leaving a lasting legacy and setting a benchmark for brands aspiring to make a meaningful difference in society through their advertising efforts.

Also Read: Dissected: Snickers “You’re Not You When You’re Hungry” Campaign

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A Complete Case study on the Marketing Strategy of Dove & it’s Campaigns

By Aditya Shastri

Marketing strategy of dove – introduction.

Some brands have grown exponentially since their inception. Dove is one of them. It started its journey in 1957 from the US and now the products are sold around 150 countries. How did they manage it? What did they do to increase their customer base? How did they manage to keep their consumers coming back? We think that Dove’s Digital Marketing Strategy played a major part in all this.

To keep up with the market, Digital is the new and effective space to tap on. IIDE helps learn you how to effectively use digital space to advertise and showcase your brand to a tremendous number of consumers. It provides different types of digital marketing courses and supports in-depth learning.

This case study analyses a few e-marketing strategies used by the company to give you an insight into what they have been doing.

Unilever is the parent company of Dove, originating in the United States. Dove products are manufactured in Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, Germany, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, South Africa, South Korea, Thailand, Turkey, and the United States.

Dove has a wide range of products which cater to the needs of men, women and toddlers as wekk. Dove’s logo is a silhouette profile of the brand’s namesake bird. Vincent Lamberti was granted the original patents related to the manufacturing of Dove in the 1950s, while he worked for the Lever brothers.

Dove’s Marketing Strategy

The primary ingredient of the Dove products is synthetic surfactants along with palm kernel and other vegetable oils and salts derived from animal fats such as tallow. At the same time, Dove products are accredited under PETA and hence, there is no animal testing involved in the manufacturing process.

• The biggest advantage being freshness and moisturizing properties of Dove products for women, its venture into Baby Dove has been an excellent marketing strategy. Mothers around the world have instantly fallen in love with products like baby bar and body wash to baby lotion simply because of their quality. While rich moisture products keep the tender skin soft, sensitive moisture products keep skin safe from allergies.
• For men, in January of 2010, Dove brought out the Dove Men+Care that includes shampoo, body wash, and deodorants.

Target Audience

Women who are active online became the core focus of Dove’s target market on digital and social media. The brand focused on females, ages 18 to 35, who valued natural, healthy beauty products. Naturally, for such socially engaged and image-conscious women, “selfies” were hugely popular.

SEO Case Study

WHAT WOMEN WANT was a dove initiative for using SEO to create the highest engaged Hair Care content destination in India.

Brand insight

Dove, as a brand has for long contained the beauty heritage in the mind of the beauty aspiring Indian consumers. The Indian beauty market is getting cluttered due to the influx of newer brands in the segment. Multiple brands arrive, make claims, promise, and often leave the consumers confused about the right products for them. Trust and belief were declining among the audience. They were needed to bring relevance to Dove’s hair care products and engage with the audience. Being surrounded by fashion and beauty brands, getting women to be loyal and in constant conversation was difficult. But, according to the studies, women in India, are looking for content that will help them stay beautiful.

Consumer insight

Women want to be well turned out for every occasion be it hanging out with friends, or a wedding, or even an everyday corporate do. They also lacked in information sources- magazines, beauty blogs, etc. the dilemma of ‘deciding what is right for them continued. No single platform existed to cater to all their questions in one place, in a manner they could trust and rely upon. So, Dove created its website. Space where women can have relevant and customized conversations about their beauty needs without brands telling them what to do.

The creativity of the communication and activation was divided into 3 phases:

• Phase 1 – Keyword Analysis & Selection

While doing analysis, found websites need optimization for Brand & Generic keywords both also detailed research and finalized the keywords relevant for the category and consumers, apart from brand keywords.

• Phase 2 – Content analysis and Generation

They found content on all topics related to hair problems/solutions. With the help of the client and content team, they made changes in the existing pages and also added new content to make the website user and SEO-friendly.

• Phase 3- Website Flow and Link Building

They built a unique strategy to get quality links from different domains which would support brand presence over the web for the brand and generic queries.

Dove Hair Care took the center stage for the hair care universe while being the authority on all things related to hair care for Indian consumers.

• 54% organic traffic increase

A year into the new launch, Dove Hair Care is the bible for over 1.2 Million people

• 787 hours of watch time

Sticky content consistently pushed daily ensured revisits to our content pages with less than 30% bounce rate.

• Ranked No. 1 in the hair category

58% of new users acquired through SEO optimization. Ranked No. 1 within the hair category – Beauty/Fashion/ Style community online

SEO helps you target your audience and with the help of correct and accurate keywords helps you rank on the search engine. Let’s tear into the previous advertising strategies and the marketing campaigns they carried out.

How Dove Has Evolved

At the very beginning of the 1950s, Dove focused its advertisement on showcasing the benefit of their beauty bar – “that it is made with ¼ cleansing cream and that it creams while it cleans.” The ad was highly comparative, asking women to try Dove for themselves and compare it with other usual soaps available in the market and feel the difference.

Dove is all about being different. The advertisements from 1960 had started getting more ladylike, featuring naturally beautiful and thin models. The 1970’s advertising period moved ahead and took a turn toward the anti-aging benefits of using Dove soap. This advertisement crossed all the barriers and went against what Dove stands for today. The period of the ’80s and ’90s focused heavily on comparative advertising, using test strips to show the difference between the moisturizing qualities of Dove compared to the harsh chemicals mixed in other soap bars. The same method of advertising persists for the company.

Dove’s social media platforms are strong with 27 million followers on Facebook and 194k followers on Twitter. On each platform, Dove used campaigns to focus on specific products. While Dove’s Facebook page focused on campaigns every month or so, its Twitter handle is much more active.

Here are some of the social media contents:

Empowering content

Non-conventional beauty standards content

Testimonials

Eco Friendly & animal care

Body confidence

Care for consumer

Aesthetics and colour / flatlays

Trends/ Happenings

Consistent themes

DOVE advertising strategy from the 1950s to 1990s

Dove started its journey through its first advertisement in 1957 featuring its “1/4 Cleansing Cream”. The ad encouraged users to have an experiment over themselves by cleansing half of their face with ordinary soap and the other half with Dove soap and feel the difference in how velvety and smooth their skin looks. Here is the link to that video- click

A print advertisement published on May 9, 1957, used the tagline, “Suddenly DOVE makes soap old-fashioned!” This advertisement, like the other ads of the 1950s, emphasized Dove’s creaming qualities and differentiated it from other soaps. In reality, Dove did not refer to itself as a soap but it called itself a “bath and toilet bar” as a new way to differentiate itself from the other products.

Dove’s advertising strategy from the 2000s to 2013

A Dove TV advertisement in 2006 was launched showing the photograph of a real woman after she had her hair and makeup done, and lighting adjusted. This ad was also a part of Dove’s earlier Campaign for Real Beauty.

In 2013, Dove beauty bar ad conducted an experiment that directly differentiated Dove soap from one of its leading competitors, Ivory. The woman in the ad used a test paper to show how ordinary soaps strip the skin saying, “If it can do that to test paper, imagine what it can do to your skin.” The ad was very well concentrated on differentiating Dove from other soap bars. This ad brought back the aromatics of Dove’s previous ads which were very much experiment-based and directly compared Dove with other top soap brands.

Dove’s Campaigns

The dove campaign focuses on making women feel confident in the skin they are in. They also aim to create a world where beauty is a source of confidence and not anxiety. Let’s look into some of them.1. Dove started it’s marketing campaigns in 1957 with the “Simple Face Test” and has come a long way since to the “Campaign of Real Beauty”. Their ads were made with the intention of changing the norms. Another advertising campaign called “#ChooseBeautiful”, showed how feeling beautiful and confident comes from within. They also tried to address the issue of body shaming faced by women of different physiques and asking the question of whether beauty comes only in one size.

2. Dove and Vogue India came together to showcase that women from different parts of the country have their own beauty. They produced a series of campaigns in order to break the stereotypical meaning and definition of beauty where women with different hair color, skin tone, physique, height and shape can face the camera confidently and say that they feel beautiful and confident by using Dove.

3. Another hard-hitting campaign by Dove called “Choose Beautiful” is a survey with a signboard that depicts “Average” and “Beautiful” in order to find out how women around the world feel about themselves.

4. This campaign video showed women with different types of getups with a hint of cluelessness over which entrance to select, where some of them are confidently entering through the “Beautiful” door while some awkwardly and in a shy manner entered through the “Average” door. At the end, women were interviewed and all of them stated confidently that they would enter through the “Beautiful” door next time around and most women did exactly that.

5. FBI-trained Forensic artist Gil Zamora was a part of Dove’s Real Beauty campaign where he made two sketches of each woman, one was narrated by the woman herself and the second sketch was described by another person. After both the sketches were completed, he revealed two sketches, it was seen that the one described by another person was glow happier and fresher, which made the women emotional and conscious about the fact that they were more beautiful than they thought.

Via their empathetic approach for branding, Dove has managed to receive a wide and tremendous size of audience. They first understand women’s insecurities and then put their conscious efforts to make them feel better instead of selling their product. They become a top of the mind brand by empowering women. Let us now check out their social media presence.

Social Media Presence

Dove has the highest number of followers over various social media platforms compared to other top brands like Ivory, Olay, and Suave. Dove has a large fan following on Facebook, they try to keep users actively engaged with discount coupons and by answering the queries and comments posted on their page in detail and within a short period of time.

Dove on Facebook

Dove’s social media presence is gigantic and very much interactive. Their Facebook page is updated almost daily which has helped them to drive the fan following to 25.6 million over the platform. The Facebook page is less about direct selling of the products and much about selling the brand name and image. The posts are about encouraging women to be self-confident and celebrate who you are, just the way you are. Dove celebrates real women, using images of women who do not fit the orthodox requirement of a model, and receives a lot of respect and followers for its commitment to celebrating real women. Every comment on the Facebook page is properly and timely responded that creates a decent customer relationship.

Dove on Twitter

Dove’s Twitter page is full of empowering posts that have driven the fan following to over 183,300 followers over the platform. The brand posts very few promotional messages via Twitter page, unlike their Facebook page. Dove highly emphasizes developing a brand personality and defining and broadcasting their beliefs.

The Dove Website

Dove’s website focuses on screening how Dove works and assists in improving the health of the skin. The website also has information about social missions for which they are working like celebrating real women, supporting positive self-esteem, and defining beauty as confidence. The women featured in their advertisements are neither celebrities nor models or actresses; rather they are fresh-faced, natural, and women of all ages. The Dove Insider program encourages interaction with the brand and develops a sense of community.

They empowered women, understood women’s insecurities and provided them with solutions to their problems and thereby, building trust and brand loyalty.

Since 1957, the Dove soap has come a long way and in this long journey, it has been accompanied by extensive body care products from the brand of the same name. Using cruelty-free and moisturizing ingredients for the products, the main aim of Dove has always been to enrich the beauty and confidence of women especially along with men and infants. 

From soaps to shampoos, deodorants to hand wash, the product line of Dove is long and reliable for getting moisture, pure and clean skin that is naturally smooth to touch. The controversies regarding Dove advertisements being racist are subdued by its campaign to break the conventional definition of beauty. Dove is a one-stop solution for all skin and hair care products. 

Similarly, IIDE is the one-stop solution for all your digital marketing skills. It helps you level up your digital marketing game by providing various courses to revamp your brand. All you have to do is register and develop the enthusiasm to learn. Before you make a decision, sign up for our completely free-of-cost masterclass led by Mr. Karan Shah, the founder, and CEO of IIDE, and learn the basics of digital marketing from the expert and then make your decision.

Thank you for taking out time and reading the case study. Comment down your suggestions and recommendations for Dove’s Marketing Strategy. Share and educate your friends with the same.

Author's Note: My name is Aditya Shastri and I have written this case study with the help of my students from IIDE's online digital marketing courses in India . Practical assignments, case studies & simulations helped the students from this course present this analysis. Building on this practical approach, we are now introducing a new dimension for our online digital marketing course learners - the Campus Immersion Experience. If you found this case study helpful, please feel free to leave a comment below.

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Aditya Shastri

Lead Trainer & Head of Learning & Development at IIDE

Leads the Learning & Development segment at IIDE. He is a Content Marketing Expert and has trained 6000+ students and working professionals on various topics of Digital Marketing. He has been a guest speaker at prominent colleges in India including IIMs...... [Read full bio]

The marketing strategy of Dove blog provided valuable insights into their brand positioning and customer-centric approach. How does Dove’s strategy resonate with diverse consumer demographics?

Dove has used powerful emotive advertising campaigns and digital and social media marketing to connect with its customers.

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Dove: Maintaining a Brand with Purpose

Can Unilever’s Dove soap maintain both its market position and social impact?

• Apple Podcasts

Unilever’s Dove soap became a brand with purpose when it launched the “Campaign for Real Beauty” to combat media-driven stereotypes of female beauty. But now Dove is facing criticism about its other brands that contradict the Dove campaign, and struggling to determine the best allocation of funds between advertising and the educational programs that deliver social impact. Can Dove maintain both its market position and social impact in the future?

Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer, Mark Kramer discusses his case, “ Dove and Real Beauty: Building a Brand with Purpose .”

HBR Presents is a network of podcasts curated by HBR editors, bringing you the best business ideas from the leading minds in management. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Harvard Business Review or its affiliates.

BRIAN KENNY: Molly Wolfe Hungerford, who hailed from County Cork, Ireland published romantic novels under the pen name The Duchess in the late 1800s. Her works were characterized as entertaining and charming, though not of great depth. But one phrase from her most popular book has stood the test of time. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Such a simple concept, but hard to accept when the global beauty industry is spending $14.4 billion a year, showing us what beauty should look like and telling us how to achieve it. Can consumers really trust that a beauty brand has their best interest at heart?

Today on Cold Call we’ll hold a mirror up to purpose-driven brands with Mark Kramer’s case entitled, Dove and Real Beauty: Building a Brand with Purpose. I’m your host, Brian Kenny, and you’re listening to Cold Call on the HBR Presents network.

Mark Kramer is a leading researcher, writer, and lecturer on strategies for social impact. He also co-founded FSG, a social impact consultancy that operates globally. Hey, Mark. Thanks for joining us today. This is your second spin on Cold Call , so we’re glad to have you back.

MARK KRAMER: Absolutely, Brian. Delighted to be here.

BRIAN KENNY: And everybody knows who Dove is. I’m going to ask you to start by telling us what your cold call would be when you teach this in the classroom, how would you start it out?

MARK KRAMER: Well, there’s actually an exercise I ask students to do about allocating their marketing budget. Because one of the interesting challenges is that what Dove is spending to actually influence young boys and girls to have a more positive body image all around the world is reaching a target audience of 11 to 14-year-olds. But their customer segment is actually 18 to 30-year-olds. And so there’s a dilemma that the marketing managers face as to how much of their budget should be spent on just traditional product promotion, how much should be spent on general publicity about the issue of beauty and women’s self-esteem, and how much should be spent on the actual programs that reach more than 35 million people around the world to actually influence their own thinking? And so I ask students to figure out how they’re going to allocate their budget among these three different activities.

BRIAN KENNY: Very interesting. Let me ask you why you decided to write this case. Actually, there’s another case in the collection that I found when I was reading this one that focuses a little bit on the early years of Dove’s corporate social responsibility approach here, but yours goes much deeper into where they are and it brings us right up to date. How does this relate to the kinds of things that you think about as a scholar and a teacher?

MARK KRAMER: Well, I teach a course on purpose and profit, really thinking about how companies can embed a social purpose into their core strategy in ways that will make a difference, both in terms of social impact and in terms of business benefit. And one of the great things about this case is we really have solid evidence about the reach and impact of Dove’s campaign on the attitudes and self-image of young people around the world, as well as actual evidence about the impact on the sales and the return on advertising spend for Dove. So you can see a very clear, measurable social impact and a very clear, measurable business impact. But I think it goes beyond that as well. First, a lot of people think about this issue of beauty as being less important than perhaps other social issues out there, climate change and so on. And one of the other interesting things about the case is the research that shows that limitations around self-image create tremendous obstacles for people in their lives. That women will not show up for a job interview, will miss a day of work, may not go to a doctor’s appointment, that young girls and boys may not participate in athletic activities, people may not show up to vote, all because they feel bad about their appearance. And of course the beauty industry is presenting us with images that have been tremendously retouched, such that no actual living human being can achieve that level of beauty. And yet we’re inundated with this consistent set of images that none of us actually come close to, and we feel bad because we don’t.

BRIAN KENNY: I think the situation in terms of the way this affects young people, women in particular, has really been exacerbated by social media.

MARK KRAMER: Yes, absolutely. One of the interesting parts about it is the reference to the public health pyramid. Because when you’re trying to reach people around an issue, you have a choice of going broad or going deep. And what the public health pyramid suggests is that you need to do both things, that there need to be programs that are intensive, programs that actually do change people’s attitudes and behavior, and that may need to be managed by a teacher or a trained facilitator. And at the same time, if you want to reach millions and millions of young boys and girls, you need to find ways to do it through social media, through television shows, through advertising, other things that have a lighter touch but reach a broader base. And so, one of the interesting things here is that Dove really developed a comprehensive public health approach that includes both the broad reach and the intensive engagement. And of course, they have the resources to do this in a way that most nonprofit organizations do not. And so it’s a really powerful example of how a company can, frankly, improve on efforts to achieve social impact over what the nonprofits and NGO community can do.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. That’s a great segue into my next question, which is just, if we pull the lens back a little bit, where does Dove sit in the personal care industry? It’s a huge industry.

MARK KRAMER: It’s a huge industry. And Dove has become, partly because of this campaign, Unilever’s single largest brand. But of course, one of the things that makes this campaign possible is that Dove soap, which is a moisturizing soap, is really about what is healthy for your skin, as opposed to a cosmetics company or a company that is more focused on actually changing your physical appearance. And so there’s a way in which Dove could embark on this Campaign for Real Beauty and tie it to their products in a way that other beauty industry cosmetics companies could not really legitimately do.

BRIAN KENNY: And that’s always been core to their brand. If you could look back at that classic advertising, that’s always been part of their message.

MARK KRAMER: One of the interesting things I discovered in doing the case is that Dove soap is actually not soap. It has a different chemical composition that was developed in World War II as a way of cleaning burns and wounds more gently. And so it actually is a different product. And their advertising has always been fact-based, asking consumers to test the soap against competing soaps, to use a pH strip to measure the pH, or to actually wash one half of their face with Dove and the other half with some other soap. So there’s a reality base to their positioning, which, again, is part of what has made this approach to their advertising consistent with the brand, consistent with the strategy.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. And we use the term purpose-driven brand. I don’t want to assume that our listeners know what that means. So from you, you study these all the time. How would you describe what a purpose-driven brand is?

MARK KRAMER: Well, I think it is a brand that has taken a social purpose or social impact goal as core to its positioning, and is actually doing things that have a measurable impact on that issue, and doing it in a way that is also differentiating their product from others, contributing to the brand identity, and driving sales. So it’s a great example of what Professor Porter and I refer to as, “creating shared value,” companies that have found a way to really bring social impact and business benefit together to create a lasting, sustainable competitive advantage.

BRIAN KENNY: And we’ve talked about a lot of purpose-driven brands on the show in the past, and it really seems like this is not about altruism. I mean, that seems to be a really good side benefit of this, but brands wouldn’t do this if it didn’t somehow tie back to their business in a positive way. Is that safe to say?

MARK KRAMER: Absolutely. And of course, altruism is great, and companies contribute philanthropy and that’s a wonderful thing, but the average large company in the US contributes about three-quarters of 1% of their profit to philanthropy. So it’s a very limited pot of money. Whereas when you’re doing something that is actually driving revenue in sales, you can spend vastly more money. And it’s not just the advertising reach, but it’s the ability to do serious research to understand how to impact and influence the issue. And so that’s why we think that purpose-driven brands where the expenditure is actually driving revenue is actually much more powerful than philanthropy.

BRIAN KENNY: Let’s talk a little bit about how this has evolved over the years at Dove. It’s sustained over time through different leaders. Why do you think that is? How are they able to keep the focus on this, and at the same drive the revenues that they needed to drive to make the business work?

MARK KRAMER: Yeah. I think that’s one of the fascinating things about this case. And it’s very clear in the case stated by Steve Miles, the guy who’s responsible for the brand, that in order to make this part of the company, they had to do four things. First, they had to have buy-in from the CEO. And of course, Paul Polman is famously recognized for his focus on sustainable living. And he picked up on this issue and encouraged Dove to pursue this path.

BRIAN KENNY: Now he’s the CEO of Unilever, is that right?

MARK KRAMER: He was the CEO Of Unilever. He stepped down about a year or two ago, but his tradition is being continued by Alan Jope, who’s the current CEO. Secondly, there has to be a culture within the company that really appreciates the issue. And so Dove has a day every year where thousands of employees go out to schools and actually facilitate one of the training programs about body image. And it enables employees to have a direct personal experience about the value of this program. And then equally important is proof of the social impact and proof of the business benefit. And so they have done studies that have determined, what is the return on investment for the advertising expenditures? It turns out to be four times higher for their purpose-driven advertising than for their product-driven advertising. They look at the impact of intent to purchase on the part of consumers who are aware of their program, and it is anywhere between a 10 to 25% increase in intent to purchase, which is absolutely huge. So they have rigorous evidence of the business benefit of this, but then they have also worked with Harvard and the London School of Economics and London School of Hygiene to do rigorous randomized control trials by these third parties, to demonstrate that these programs are actually evidence-based and actually do change young girls’ and boys’ perceptions of beauty and of their own body image. And so it’s these combination of factors, the CEO’s support, engaging the culture of the company and employees widely in this campaign, but also demonstrating that you are achieving results on both the business and social impact side that is really what has kept this program in place for nearly two decades at this point.

BRIAN KENNY: It’s really interesting because the case refers to some of the approaches that they’ve taken to introduce these concepts to the world. And there’ve been some pretty famous videos that they’ve launched. Can you talk a little bit about how they’re bringing these ideas to people on a broad scale?

MARK KRAMER: One of the nice things about the case is that Dove has given us permission to link to the videos so that you can actually see them firsthand. And I have to say, some of these videos actually bring tears to my eyes. They’re famous for the Evolution ad, which is just a simple 75-second ad that actually shows how a normal woman’s face is transformed through makeup and styling, but also through digital retouching to the kind of image we actually see on a billboard or on television. And it makes so clear the fact that this is not a form of beauty that is humanly achievable. And it cost $150,000 to create that ad. They believe they’ve generated $150 million worth of advertising revenue from hundreds of millions of people viewing this ad. The one that I find even more touching is the Sketches ad, where they have a forensic artist from the police force set up to sketch women’s faces. And the artist can’t see the woman, but he asks the woman to describe her face, and he sketches it. And then the woman goes off and meets with another person and just spends a little time chatting with them. And then the artist asks that second person to describe the first woman’s face. And what happens is that that stranger’s description of the face is much more beautiful than the woman’s description of her own face. And then they put up the two sketches and let the woman come back and see the difference. And again, it brings tears to my eyes to see people recognize how they have internalized a sense of unattractiveness that is not what the world sees.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. It’s very powerful. And the case goes into some of the numbers. I forget what the exact statistics are, but women’s self-image is super low, pretty much everywhere in the world.

MARK KRAMER: It is. And one of the challenges of the case is, the reasons why it’s low and how to influence it are culturally dependent. And so the programs that have worked in the US and Western Europe don’t work in China, don’t work in India, don’t work in Africa, and yet these are important emerging markets for the brand. And so the brand has really had to do pretty intensive research to understand how to make their programs relevant in different parts of the world.

BRIAN KENNY: I guess one of the questions I have is, there are some tensions that the case reveals, and the Dove brand is one of Unilever’s brands, but they also have the Axe brand. They have brands that represent the complete counter to what natural, real beauty should be all about. And they reinforce all the stereotypes that we’re seeing from other beauty companies about what beauty should look like.

MARK KRAMER: That’s right. And that always leads to a terrific student discussion about how to manage this conflict. And one of the things we talk about in our course is this idea of whether companies are good or evil, or whether they are net positive. And there are a lot of non-profits or NGOs out there that want to try and evaluate whether a company is good or bad. We actually think that’s naive, that any large company is probably doing some good things somewhere in the world and some bad things somewhere else. And when Porter and I talk about this idea of creating shared value, we focus in on what every company can do to actually create positive impact somewhere, somehow in its set of activities and products or services. And we don’t try and pronounce whether a company is a saint or a devil. And so this forces students to think about, given the undeniable positive impact that Dove is having, how do you think about Unilever more broadly given that they also do have these products that take a very different view of beauty?

BRIAN KENNY: We live in the age of millennials and Gen Z. We know that people in these generations care a lot about the organizations they work for, and they want to work for someplace that they can feel good about. How does this help Dove in terms of attracting new talent? Have they seen it reap dividends in that area as well?

MARK KRAMER: They have. And I know that from conversations with the folks we interviewed at Dove. I’m not sure to be honest, that that is a dimension that comes through as strongly in the case as perhaps it should. And I have to admit, I sometimes am a little bit skeptical about that. There’s no question people would like to work for a company that they feel good about. On the other hand, there are a lot of different motivations that go into taking a job.

BRIAN KENNY: So how do they balance then, I guess, between investing in the mission, because it’s a really important part of their brand, but also driving the sale of products? You mentioned earlier that product managers have to make these hard choices. What does that look like? Where do they come down on that?

MARK KRAMER: Well, it does vary from market to market, and while they are taking a more centralized role and have recently decided that every market has to spend at least 50% of its expenditure on the mission-related advertising and programs. Actually, during most of the time that’s covered by the case, the average market only spent 5% of their revenue on these programs. And there is evidence in the case from some studies that the more that regional managers spend on the mission-related advertising and programs, the better the product sales do. On the other hand, there was one point where they went entirely with mission-driven, and the product sales began to lag. And so there is this, again, interesting tension within the case, about how much do you spend on social impact, how much do you spend bragging about the social impact you have so people are aware of it, and how much do you spend on just traditional advertising to make people go buy the product? And there isn’t a single correct answer, but it is a tension that runs throughout the case.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. I think that’s interesting too, because the cynics who are listening might say, “Oh, come on. I mean, do they really believe this stuff? Isn’t this just another form of marketing for Dove to sell soap and beauty products?”

MARK KRAMER: What’s really interesting about Dove here is they really have developed these intensive programs with the World Association of Girl Guides and Scouts, and with universities that actually reach tens of millions of young people around the world, and actually do influence their self-image. And so their spending on these programs is not just advertising dollars, not just money going to charity, but is actually delivering real impact in a way that the nonprofit sector really couldn’t afford to do.

BRIAN KENNY: I thought it was interesting, the whole aspect of them moving from saying to doing, and that’s something we talk about at Harvard Business School a lot. And that was behind the introduction of The FIELD Method a few years ago, was that we knew that the case method in the classroom was doing a great job of inculcating ideas and theories, but we needed to get students to a place where they actually had to act on those ideas. And it sounds like Dove has taken that to the next step too, to keep invigorating this campaign.

MARK KRAMER: Absolutely. They talk very clearly about this balance of brand say and brand do. And again, part of what’s interesting is most of the brand do, these actual programs that reach young people around the world, most of their customers are not aware of it. There’s a data point in the case that only about 28% of consumers are aware of the brand do. And yet they need the brand do to give integrity to the brand say, and they wouldn’t be able to partner with nonprofit organizations. And they actually receive grant funding from UNICEF and Gavi and other organizations to extend their work. They wouldn’t be able to do that if they didn’t have the actual brand do on the ground.

BRIAN KENNY: So how would you define this in terms of the culture of the organization, how much a part of the culture of the organization is the Real Beauty campaign? Has it become just part of their DNA at this point?

MARK KRAMER: It has absolutely become part of their DNA. But one of the interesting challenges when you’re trying to solve a social problem as part of your marketing or business model, is that if you actually succeed, you undercut your own differentiation. So there’s been a real shift over the last 15 years in advertisers beginning to use real women rather than actresses and models in a greater awareness of the challenges of this artificial sense of beauty and its consequences for public health and for people’s lives. And so as they have actually become more successful in putting this issue on the global agenda, they have lost some of their differentiation. And so one of the questions the case raises is, should they continue with this campaign or do they need to move on to something else? When is it no longer differentiating their marketing, even if they’re continuing to have a positive impact?

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. Really interesting question, and not an easy solution at all I would think, once you’ve got so much invested in this particular purpose-driven approach.

MARK KRAMER: Absolutely.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. This has been a fabulous conversation. I have one more question for you before we let you go, Mark. And that is, for those people who are out there listening, maybe they work at organizations where they’re already purpose-driven, or maybe they want to bring some purpose to their organization, what’s one thing that you’d like them to take away from this case?

MARK KRAMER: Well, the one thing I’d like them to take away from this case is it’s about having actual impact in a way that creates both social and business benefit. It’s not about posturing, it’s not about philanthropy. It’s about actually achieving both business and social impact and holding yourself accountable on both of those dimensions.

BRIAN KENNY: That’s great. Mark Kramer, thank you so much for joining us today.

MARK KRAMER: Brian, thank you. A pleasure to be here.

BRIAN KENNY: If you enjoy Cold Call , you might like other podcasts on the HBR Presents Network. Whether you’re looking for advice on navigating your career, you want the latest thinking in business and management, or you just want to hear what’s on the minds of Harvard Business School professors, the HBR Presents Network has a podcast for you. Find them on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. I’m your host, Brian Kenny, and you’ve been listening to Cold Call , an official podcast of Harvard Business School on the HBR Presents Network.

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From cause marketing to a greater mission: how dove created a business model on purpose.

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Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty has turned into a mission — a commitment of inclusivity and body ... [+] positivity has trickled down to every aspect of the brand.

When thinking of brands that are doing good and being purposeful, many come to mind: Ben and Jerry’s, Bombas, MOD Pizza, Seventh Generation , Patagonia , Dairy Farmers of America … the list goes on and on. 

But why do these brands jump to the top? Because they live their purpose from the inside out and they act on their purpose consistently. 

 One campaign that pushed the brand Dove to the top of the pack was the Campaign for Real Beauty . This came out in 2004 and was really one of the first large-scale brands to publicly state that they are focused on a societal issue. 

 As time went on, this campaign turned into a mission — a commitment of inclusivity and body positivity has trickled down to every aspect of the brand. With the significant conversations communities are having today about social justice, and their current work on the CROWN Act , I reached out to talk with Unilever North America Beauty and Personal Care Business COO, EVP Esi Eggleston Bracey. 

Jeff Fromm: How has the campaign for real beauty evolved from cause marketing to purpose and what's involved in the program today? 

Esi Eggleston Bracey : Dove has been committed to making beauty a positive experience for women for more than 15 years. We have reached  60 million young people through the Dove Self-Esteem Project, and aspire to reach a quarter of a billion in the next decade to ensure that we can foster a positive relationship with beauty in the next generation. It started as the Campaign for Real Beauty and through the work we've done, we realize it is our life's work. We realized, it's not a campaign, it's an ongoing mission and commitment. It started in 2004 as an effort to portray real women in real bodies so that women could see themselves in the media and advertising, unlike anything else at the time. We later turned this into measurable action with something called our Dove Real Beauty Pledge. 

We vowed to always use real women, never models, in our advertising and our content and promised to never digitally distort any images.As we continued to do work in that space, we sought further opportunity for more inclusivity in beauty and launched other initiatives. One of them is Show Us, in which we partnered with Getty Images and Girlgaze to build the biggest photo stock library containing over 10,000 images of women and non-binary individuals from female photographers from across almost 40 countries to really help shatter beauty stereotypes.

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Fromm: Is your purpose connected to sustainability strategies within the company that led to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals as well? 

Bracey: Unilever’s mission in beauty and personal care is to be People and Planet Positive. When you talk about sustainability, it's often thought of as environmental sustainability and that piece of it is planet positive, but then there's the people in community sustainability. We measure our impact on people with how many lives we reach. You heard, I mentioned the lives reached for the Dove Self-Esteem Project, going from 60 million to the goal of reaching a quarter of a billion by 2030. And then on planet positive, we also have a range of metrics related to carbon emissions, plastics, use of water, waste reduction – and that is just scratching the surface. This past year, the Dove brand went to a hundred percent post-consumer resin. For a brand the size of Dove to do that, the scale and impact that that has on the planet is tremendous.

Fromm: Can you explain Dove’s work on the CROWN act and the CROWN coalition?

Bracey: In February of 2019, Dove started to work on the CROWN Act and the CROWN Coalition. In the US, it's actually legal for workplaces, schools and organizations to discriminate against you based on the hair texture and style. So, we formed something called the CROWN Coalition. CROWN stands for Creating a Respectful and Open World for Natural Hair. With Dove as the initiator, we co-founded a coalition that supported legislative action called the CROWN Act. It makes hair discrimination illegal and actually protects hair as a part of FEEHA, Federal Equal Employment and Housing Act. 

We got the first CROWN Act passed in California, championed by Senator Holly Mitchell in California, July 3rd 2019. Now, the U.S. has seven states in total where this discrimination is illegal because of Dove's work with the CROWN coalition.

 When you think about how the campaign for real beauty has evolved, it has evolved to being one of incredible impact in action, including driving legislative change through partners and the CROWN coalition. 

Fromm: How has Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty and the work through the CROWN Coalition and CROWN act carried over into the efforts of Dove Men+Care?

Bracey: In the ways that Dove has worked to create universally positive beauty experiences, Dove Men+Care has worked to break down stereotypes around what it means to be a man. Dove Men+Care has been grounded in care, with the goal of shattering these outdated stereotypes by celebrating the care that men show to themselves and others. This has remained at the foundation of our work, especially the meaningful steps we’ve taken through for paid paternity leave and racial equity for Black men and fathers.

Fromm: Tell me more about your paternity leave efforts, and the launch of the Pledge for Paternity Leave. Why was this an important issue for Dove Men+Care to address?

Bracey: As a brand, we are constantly assessing the barriers that hold men back from being their most caring selves, and found that less than one in five men in the U.S. are offered any paid paternity leave – this fuels outdated gender roles regarding the responsibilities of men and women at home and at work. So in 2019, the brand introduced the Pledge for Paternity Leave with the goal of making a comprehensive, federally-mandated paid paternity leave that is accessible for all fathers. Understanding the urgent need from fathers and families, we also launched the Paternity Leave Fund, a $1 million commitment to fund leave fordads.

 We have garnered nearly 50,000 signatures for our Pledge, and we have already met with 27 members of Congress to discuss the path for federal policy change.

  Fromm: You mentioned that Dove Men+Care is also committed to fighting for racial equity for Black men and fathers. How has the brand taken actionable steps towards this effort?

Bracey: There are barriers that hold men back from being their most caring selves, but there are also barriers for Black men and fathers specifically that also threaten their safety and well-being.

 Just a few weeks prior to this past Father’s Day, we witnessed the heinous murder of Mr. George Floyd – this kind of hatred and violence continues to be carried out against Black men because our media and culture are filled with negative stereotypes and portrayals of Black men. This has allowed us to tolerate and even accept the mistreatment of Black men in society.

 The brand needed to take bold action, and so we introduced #FathersDayTaken, remembering the thousands of Black fathers who have lost their lives due to racism and violence and highlighting caring Black dads – a narrative so often overlooked. To support Black families who have lost a loved one, we established the Fathers Taken Fund with a $1 million investment.

  Fromm: How exactly is Dove Men+Care extending this commitment? What work has the brand done since Father’s Day, and what work do you expect to be carried into 2021?

Bracey: We saw the incredible work that influential leaders in the space – like NBA athletes – were doing to ignite conversation and change. To change how the world sees and treats Black men, Dove Men+Care partnered with the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) to create the Commit to C.A.R.E. (Care About Racial Equity) Now initiative with the goal of creating a world where Black men and young men are cared for, respected, supported and protected.

 The partnership is just getting started, but together we will work towards changing representation of Black men in media and culture with video content that dimensionalized the athletes, advocating for issues that matter most to the Black community like public safety and fair & safe voting, and impacting Black youth by investing in the individual programs and foundations the players have started.

  Fromm: How does the work from these brands connect to the internal culture within the division and the personal care division that you run and how do you measure internal culture? How does this impact employee engagement?

Bracey: The culture of the purpose of business is to do good in the world. The teams are very proud of seeing the next level of impact actually driving legislative change, seeing the impact that we have on society, and the business being rewarded with growth because of it. We have so many initiatives and efforts that have spun from this, including Dove and Dove Men+Care but also across many of our other brands. There's momentum and it's really spread further in the culture and creating even more impact.

For questions about this interview, please contact Jeff at [email protected]

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2019 WINNER 5 FOR 50 5 FOR 50

Dove dove - campaign for real beauty, ogilvy *lead agency, edelman usa *lead agency.

In 2003 Dove set out to make beauty a source of confidence, not anxiety, for women. Fifteen years later millions of beauty insecurities have been dispelled and billions of dollars have been added to brand value. Dove’s campaign touched hearts, impacted lives, changed the beauty industry and made Dove the most meaningful beauty brand in the world. But the battle is far from won. As new beauty anxieties appear, Dove continues to pursue its bold vision for change.

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Dove and Real Beauty: Building a Brand with Purpose

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• Dove and Real Beauty: Building a Brand with Purpose  By: Mark R. Kramer
• Dove and Real Beauty: Building a Brand with Purpose  By: Mark R. Kramer, Myriam Sidibe and Gunjan Veda

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Dove on how it created an influencer community

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November 28, 2023 | 7 min read

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Dove and Collectively have won the Influencer Partnership category at The Drum Awards for Social Media. Here is the award-winning case study.

Here's is the award-winning activation.

Dove has consistently championed diverse beauty representations, aiming to foster a positive relationship with beauty that's universally accessible. In 2023, our focus extended to amplifying Dove's social impact mission and iconic products, propelling competitiveness, and encouraging consumer action.

Aligned with our commitment to real women consumers, Dove has pioneered creator-led marketing, amplifying the voices of independent female small business owners who own personal brands online. Our collaboration with these allies significantly boosts Brand Lift, cementing influencers as crucial channels for Dove's business outcomes.

This year, we built upon previous successes, empowering influencer voices to advocate for body confidence and inclusivity across diverse Dove product categories and social impact pillars. Our initiatives spanned various product categories, including Skin Cleansing, Deodorant, Hair, Hand Hygiene, and Purpose pillars. Our goals for the year:

Expand engaged reach on a larger scale by growing the influencer community.

Establish Dove as an actionist beauty brand through innovative influencer relationship-building, challenging industry norms.

Foster a broader social impact movement through the One Dove Community, harnessing the energy of our influencer partners to engage followers in Dove's causes actively.

Drawing from insights gained over four years of collaboration with Collectively, we devised the following strategies to achieve these goals:

Increased investment in Macro and Elite talent to amplify messaging reach.

Capitalized on consumer sentiment and TikTok trends to enhance brand resonance.

Actively nurtured Earned and Nano Communities to cultivate new interests and broaden share-of-voice.

Consistently elevated influencer content through A/B testing across formats, messaging, and assets.

Adopted a "relationship first" approach, creating content resonating with both Brand and Talent Partners, effectively integrating creators into the Dove family.

Invested in 3-5 briefs per influencer annually to deepen relationships and strengthen audience affinity.

Strategically blended Dove's successful tactics with competitor insights to elevate content in 2024.

Tracked commerce-driving traffic to major retailers to measure direct sales impact.

As of June 2023, with 45% of the annual scope completed, our efforts have reaped remarkable results:

14 campaign briefs executed

312 creators activated

693 social posts shared

An impressive 684 million total impressions generated

607,000 organic engagements achieved

An encouraging 7.5% Actual Organic Engagement Rate

A strong 48.6% Comment Relevancy Rate

1.2 million link clicks recorded

Our influencer community remains a testament to Dove's dedication to diversity, comprising varying body types, sexual orientations, abilities, and ethnicities:

37% Black or African American

23% Hispanic

9% Size Diverse

5% Different Abled

Dove's strategic prowess has translated into a competitive advantage, evident through impressive performance results:

Actual Impressions delivery nearly doubled year-over-year.

View Rate witnessed a substantial 30% increase year-over-year.

Click-through Rate rose by a commendable 29% year-over-year.

Dove's Unique Approach to Social Impact: Spotlight on Campaigns

#PasstheCROWN - #BlackHairIsProfessional:

Dove co-founded the CROWN Coalition in 2019, championing the CROWN Act to eliminate race-based hair discrimination. This year, our brief focused on workplace hair discrimination with an expanded creator content series on LinkedIn, Instagram, and TikTok to tell real women’s stories about their experiences wearing their natural hair. The partnership with LinkedIn for the #BlackHairIsProfessional campaign was pivotal, highlighting workplace hair discrimination. The campaign's potency on LinkedIn was evident, achieving an impressive 19x impressions-to-follower ratio. The campaign spurred viral conversations, with professionals rallying around the cause of embracing natural hair in the workplace.

97M impressions

6.1% Actual Engagement Rate and 3% click-through rate

Viral conversation on LinkedIn led to 9MM organic earned conversion impressions in the first 4 weeks (~6MM in week 1)

More than 450,000 professionals have taken the free LinkedIn learning courses on more inclusive and equitable work environments

#BlackHairIsProfessional has given thousands of Black women a safe space to talk about their hair journeys at work with more than 300,000 posts, actions, and tags

#17YearsofChange & #ChangeIsBeautiful:

In a groundbreaking move, Dove introduced an updated body wash formula and packaging after 17 years. Dove collaborated with trend-driven comedians, skin experts, and emotional storytellers from the One Dove Community to support this launch for distinct campaigns. The program exceeded expectations by garnering a 535% surge in impressions, with viral posts such as this one, amassing 2 million views: TikTok Video.

4.2 million Impressions

An impressive 9.16% Actual Engagement Rate

A remarkable 21% View Rate

-This endeavor exemplified Dove and Collectively's prowess in merging product and purpose marketing, effectively intertwining product narratives with purpose-driven marketing and inclusive casting. The "Change is Beautiful" content, emphasizing embracing change as a beautiful process, achieved exceptional engagement and click-through rates, surpassing benchmarks by over 2 times. Audience reactions indicated positive sentiment and intent to purchase: “This is the first ad I’ve seen in a long time that actually made me want to buy the product.” - comment on @itskatesteinberg’s viral TikTok post.

#CrownCollection & #HairLove:

To support products catering to textured hair—Dove Crown Collection and Hair Love for kids—creators shared genuine mother-daughter stories, empowering families to embrace their natural hair. The campaign exceeded engagement rate and comment relevancy benchmarks, successfully reaching engaged audiences with impactful content. Achievements encompassed:

Over 2.5 million impressions (paid and organic)

A strong 9% Actual Engagement Rate

Impressive engagement, particularly on Instagram Reels

Notable Click Through Rates for IG Stories exceeding benchmarks

Campaign for Kids Online Safety:

Dove marked a significant milestone by entering its third year of efforts to enhance girls' self-esteem and raise awareness about harmful beauty content on social media. The Campaign for Kids Online Safety, a collaboration with Common Sense Media, aimed to hold social media platforms accountable while safeguarding young individuals' mental well-being. Through the enactment of the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), both kids and parents were empowered, giving them a say in shaping the online experiences of youngsters for the betterment of their mental health. Our strategic approach to supporting this partnership was divided into three distinct influencer cohorts—parents, advocates, and social media trailblazers—spanning major platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. This collective effort worked harmoniously to amplify diverse personal stories and perspectives. The results were extraordinary:

3.2 million impressions/views, exceeding the initial goal by an impressive 64%

In-feed View Rate of 9.05%, with Instagram Reels standing out at an impressive 23.75% view rate

A remarkable Comment Relevancy Rate of 53.86%, with LinkedIn engagement leading at 82.52%

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Industry insights.

Dove: The Rise of a Purpose Led Brand

The era of information, opinion and activism…!

It took one pioneering moment from the 80s to completely disrupt the rules of interpersonal communication…

The advent of INTERNET!

Cut to 2021; social networks have enabled individuals to stand up for their opinions and values at an unimaginable scale.

From #BlackLivesMatter attracting the collective outcry of half a million people, Greta Thunberg making impassioned pleas for climate change to #MeToo breaking the shackles of sexual harassment and, more recently, social media becoming a hotbed for global solidarity against the pandemic – the examples of social activism are numerous and perpetuated into the lessons of history.

Effectively, the internet gave a voice to everyone! Lo and behold, this voice permeated into every aspect of people’s lives, so much so that purchasing decisions expanded beyond the purview of product & price assessment to how closely brands align with an individual’s value system.

Now more than ever, brands are under the spotlight for what they say. How do they “humanize” themselves?

To cut the chase, brands are continuously asking that what is their purpose?

However, before purpose became the “buzzword” that it is today, one brand activated purpose, masterfully, over the years, to reach its iconic status – DOVE!

What is a Brand Purpose?

Before we dive into the heady world of Dove, it’s important to understand what Brand Purpose is and what it most certainly isn’t!

Often, the brand purpose is mistaken for CSR initiatives. If not that, brand purpose, mission, and values are interchangeably used in the colloquial language. In simple words, a brand purpose is a reason for which brands stand for; it’s a reason which makes a brand think beyond the bottom line. A brand’s purpose defines the role of the brand in society.

It took a little-known author, way back in 2009, and his now-famous Ted Talk to give purpose the centerstage it occupies now. All he said was, “Start with Why.”

“Why” lays the foundation for the purpose of any organization, big or small. A genuine Brand Purpose should successfully answer the question: “Beyond making money, why do we do what we do?”

If you haven’t guessed by now, we must thank Simon Sinek for giving purpose to “Purpose.” Through his largely popular Golden Circle , he urged brands to think, act and communicate from the inside out, to understand their reason for being. Purpose, in a perfectly ideal world, should aim to end the brand’s self-involved relationship with society – by helping people & communities solve problems.

Except, more often than not, it sits dormant in the PowerPoints of marketing teams and is never really acted upon in cohesive, meaningful ways. “Are brands trying to make money or help people?” is, sadly, a discourse that has never reached equilibrium in the marketing world.

Not to forget, numerous brands have attempted to ride the “Purpose” bandwagon with opportunistic campaigns that scream zero substance or commitment.

The outcome – People have become even more skeptical of brands today than in the past.

So, why does brand purpose strategy of Dove hits a different note?

Hint – AUTHENTICITY & ACTIONABILITY

Journey of Dove to a purpose driven brand : Stand with Consumers to stand out of competitors

It all started with a market study of 3,000+ women from 10 different countries on how they perceived beauty. What was touted as an attempt to rejuvenate the brand paved a momentous shift from “product-centric advertising” to “consumer-centric advertising.”

Fewer than 5% of women considered themselves beautiful, heralding the launch of massively celebrated Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty.”  A brilliant movement marketing strategy that defied the stereotypical beauty standard of a young, model-thin body with perfect features. The goal was to make a fundamental change in the way that women viewed themselves.

Through a series of billboard advertisements showcasing photographs of regular women in place of professional models, the ads invited passers-by to vote on whether a particular model was, “Fat or Fab” or “Wrinkled or Wonderful”, with the voting results dynamically updated and displayed on the billboards.

The Real Beauty campaign resonated at several levels, earnestly addressing the deep rooted insecurities and self-esteem issues of young women to which customers could empathize.

Needless to say, the campaign was a smash hit, garnering 150M USD worth of media exposure. The “ Evolution ” video spot, showcasing women transformed by the hair, makeup, lighting, and image manipulation for a photo shoot, was a monster hit, smashing 1.7 million views on YouTube within a month, while the “Real Beauty Sketches” was viewed more than 50M times 12 days after release.

The overall sales of Dove products jumped from $2.5 to $4 billion in the campaign’s first ten years. Dove bars became the number one preferred soap brand in the U.S. and Unilever’s best-selling product company-wide.

The ultimate voice of women with meaningful customer engagement

The fact that the “Real Beauty” program continues to spark discussions 17 years after its debut firmly points to its innate value as a social change agent – a feat fewer campaigns will ever achieve.

However, Dove’s ongoing success is largely based on actively listening and engaging with audiences through rich omnichannel customer experiences – a pivotal step in tracking & measuring success.

The “ Dove Self Esteem Project ” is a perfect example of the brand listening and supporting the interests and concerns of its consumers. The campaign offers resources for parents, educators, youth leaders, and mentors to conduct their own “ self esteem workshops .

Since the inception of  Dove Self-Esteem Project, more than 625,000 teachers have delivered Dove self-esteem workshops and more than 1.5 million parents have engaged with the digital content.” Very recently, the project released an inspiring video called ‘Reverse Selfie’ to address the impact of editing apps on the self-esteem of young people, firmly supported by tips and toolkits on making social media a healthier environment.

Never the one to miss a beat, Dove also created an Ad Makeover interactive campaign, a Facebook-based venture that allows women to subvert depressing advertisements on weight loss, toxic beauty standards, and cosmetic surgery with feel-good messages designed by Dove. The statistics bear witness to the campaign’s success: 71% of the women who participated in the campaign said that they felt more beautiful.

Additionally, Dove started a conversation on social media with Project #ShowUs asking women to showcase their real beauty. The project featured 5,000 images of 179 women from 39 countries, and these were shot by 116 women, highlighting underrepresented backgrounds such as handicapped, black, Asian, pansexual, elder, and more. In hindsight, the project created a sense of community that allowed everyone to join the movement of empowering women.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Dove Global Channel 🌎 (@dove)

Reinforcing allegiance to purpose with  potent partnerships

Over the years, Dove has not only broadened its digital footprint through multi-touchpoint campaigns but also enabled robust partnerships, all while maintaining its single-mindedness around support of “real beauty.”

Case in point, Dove partnered with Twitter, in an effort to identify negative tweets about beauty and body image, responding to them in real-time as part of the  #SpeakBeautiful campaign. This was coupled with a creative advertisement about the predicament of body shaming presented during the Academy Awards pre-show.

The partnership also underpinned the launch of   “No Digital Distortion” mark – a symbol indicating that a picture hasn’t been digitally altered across all branded content, serving as an uninterrupted reminder of real beauty across both digital and non-digital channels. 

More recently, Dove signed a three-year partnership with UNICEF, in an effort to help 10 million young people in Brazil, India, and Indonesia gain better self-esteem and body confidence by 2022.

We’re thrilled to announce our partnership with @UNICEF to bring self-esteem education to 10 million more young people in Brazil, India, and Indonesia https://t.co/JOCComqctT — Dove (@Dove) July 11, 2019

The bottom line…

As social consciousness gains wider momentum amidst an incorrigible pandemic – organizations are expected to activate brand purpose into meaningful cultural movements. And the brand purpose of Dove perfectly teaches us this message.

Except activating brand purpose is a perilous, slippery slope! Brand purpose is more than one memorable activation. Our recall fades over time, which is to say, even the best of campaigns fall into the abyss of nothingness.

It takes consistent work to make a brand part of something bigger than itself, for its purpose to be more than just a phenomenon.

What’s the secret formula behind “Real Beauty Campaign’s” longevity? It was backed by solid research into fundamental attitudes and insecurities of women, communicated with captivating storytelling – OVER and OVER AGAIN!

As we stare wide eyed, yet vulnerable, at the multitude of issues challenging the world…

The time for action is now, for brand purpose to become the greatest flag bearer of hope – today & tomorrow!

-AMAZONPOLLY-ONLYWORDS-START-

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A Junior Brand Manager at Nestle Waters and an ESSEC Business School alumni, Gargi has 4+ years of experience in marketing, communication and consulting. A passionate storyteller and brand builder, she aims to empower people through meaningful dialogues. On happy days, you will find her hunting cafes, reading books or traveling to unexplored lands.

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How dove's real beauty campaign won, and nearly lost, its audience.

In their 2019 Page Society Case Study Competition winning entry, Sarah Dasher and Olivia Zed examine the hits and misses of Dove's Real Beauty campaign.

by Olivia Zed 16 April 2019

It’s tough to argue with PRWeek’s recent anointing of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty by Unilever and Edelman as the Best U.S. Campaign of the Past 20 Years. Since its 2004 inception, Real Beauty’s provocative ads, thought leadership, and educational initiatives for beauty equality combined to form something more akin to a social movement than a gimmicky emotional appeal from a packaged goods giant.

The Dove difference hasn’t just come from using more diverse "real" women in its ads. Unilever was one of the earliest to adopt corporate sustainability into its business model, and the often tearjerker Real Beauty ads were backed by lots of action to improve the self-esteem of women everywhere.

The campaign’s impact extended beyond promoting a vision for beauty equality. Sales for Dove jumped from $2.5 to $4 billion in the campaign’s first ten years. Dove bars became the number one preferred soap brand in the U.S. and Unilever’s best selling product company-wide.

That’s why so many people scratched their heads over the subsequent missteps that caused consumers to call foul on what they said was racism in some of the Real Beauty messages.

Specifically, in October 2017, Dove released a three-second body wash ad on Facebook. The ad featured a diverse trio of women individually lifting their shirts to transition into one another: a black woman pulled up her shirt to reveal a white woman, who then unveiled an Asian woman.

Depicting a black woman transforming to white through soap was an unwitting nod to an ugly theme of 19th century advertising when blatantly racist messages suggested "dirty" people of color could be purified to white with soap.

Unsurprisingly, the ad swiftly incited a wave of criticism across social media denouncing Dove for racism. Global headlines in top-tier traditional media outlets followed.

This was the third incident; uncomfortably similar missteps had occurred in 2011 and 2014.

As graduate students at Boston University’s College of Communication looking for a challenging crisis to analyze in our entry to the IPR’s and Page Society’s annual case study competition , we decided to examine the lightning rod cultural issues of purpose, profits and race through the lens of the 2017 Dove episode.

Where did Dove go wrong? For us, the most salient issues were the enduring failure to act and listen when consumers tried to have a conversation with Dove.

In each instance, individuals called out the brand and asked for answers. But instead of welcoming the opportunity for dialogue and reflection, Dove tried to diminish those concerns and excuse its own actions.

In 2011, Dove denied any wrongdoing or intent to cause offense, and in 2014, the company attributed its mistake to a production oversight. Together, these response strategies signaled a focus on minimizing responsibility and scapegoating rather than listening to the public.

In short, Dove was dismissive, which inevitably led to the 2017 crisis.

For purpose-driven brands like Dove, success is largely based on the strength of their consumers relationships. Key to those bonds is moving beyond a transactional approach and investing in efforts to listen. Actively listening and engaging with audiences shows that you care. And Dove’s repeated, absent responses indicated it did not.

At least, that’s how things looked for the last 18 months until Dove’s recent unveiling of a new Real Beauty effort grounded entirely in listening. Project #ShowUs asks women to do just that in a crowdsource-driven partnership with Getty Images and Girlgaze "to create the world’s largest photo library created by women and non-binary individuals to shatter beauty stereotypes."

Dove rang a bell for asking instead of telling when it announced #ShowUs in a full-page ad in The New York Times that led with a mea culpa.

Not only did Dove hear and admit it sometimes gets things wrong, the company asked for input. It the kind of sound action required of brands that take positions on emotional, and sadly too often divisive subjects like race and gender. To us, listening is a real act of beauty within a noisy, turbulent world.

Sarah Dasher and Olivia Zed are recent graduates of the Boston University College of Communication’s Master of Science in Public Relations program. Zed is a graduate development professional at FleishmanHillard New York. Dasher is a communications intelligence consultant at Cisco.

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Home » Management Case Studies » Case Study: Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty

Case Study: Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty

Unilevers Dove brand was launched in the market as a cleansing bar soap in 1957. The soap was based non-irritating cleaner and moisturizing component. By 1970s, Unilever had enhanced the soap into a beauty bar, which was milder and promised women of moisturized skins. The popularity of the soap at this time soared, and Unilever started expansion into the global market and by 1996, the brand was selling in over 80 countries. Between 1995 and 2001, Unilever expanded the range of products under the dove brand to include moisturizers, face creams, deodorants, shower gel, shampoos, conditioners, among other wide range of beauty and care products.

The key features and attributes of the brand such as its soft colors focused on promoting it as a rejuvenating, calming and exfoliating product brand with milder effects on the skin and high performance moisturizing abilities for dry skins. As the Dove brand mainly targeted women, its dove logo and tagline represent gentleness and softness at a higher sophistication in performance.

The Campaign’s Inspiration

The findings were based on interviews with 3,200 women between the ages of 18-64 and were largely disheartening. World-wide, only 12% of women are satisfied with their physical appearance. No women described themselves as “gorgeous,” 1% of women described themselves as “stunning” and 2% of women describe themselves as “beautiful.” However there was a marked demand for broader, more inclusive definition of beauty: 68% strongly agree that the media sets and unrealistic standard of beauty and 75% wish the media did a better job of representing the broad range of women’s physical attractiveness, including size and shape and age. Furthermore, components of true beauty extend beyond mere physical attractiveness, to happiness, kindness, wisdom, dignity, love, authenticity and self-realization.

With this in mind the management team at Dove saw a great opportunity. At the time they were just introducing their line of beauty products.

Real Beauty Campaign

In 2004, Dove launched the first phase of it’s campaign to combat the problems revealed in their global study. They rolled-out a series of advertisements featuring women whose appearances are outside of the stereotypical norms of beauty. The Dove campaign recruited women recruited off the streets (at coffee shops, bookstores, grocery stores, etc.) instead of professional models. The women in the print ads are between the ages of 22 and 96 and a range across a variety of sizes (from 6 to 12). The images were shot by in-demand fashion photographer David Rankin. Dove guarantees the images in the campaign have not been airbrushed in any way. The advertisements were places on billboards and bus stops throughout New York, Chicago, DC, LA and other top urban markets and asked viewers to go online to cast their vote: whether the models were “Fat or fab?”, “Wrinkled or wonderful?”, “Grey or gorgeous?” and “Freckled or flawless?”

In response to the news and media outcry that erupted after Spain banned overly-skinny models from runways in 2006, Dove expanded on this phase of the campaign with three notable video ads: Evolution, Onslaught, and Amy. Each one of these videos tells a little bit about their campaign.

Evolution is a video about the beauty industry’s efforts to change women’s appearances into something completely different in the pursuit of publication. The video starts with a woman walking in the frame and sitting on a stool. A man can be heard shouting directions to some crew. The screen fades to black and then words appear on screen.“a Dove film” followed later by “evolution.” As the woman comes back onto screen, lights begin to turn on and people start to surround her, doing her hair and make-up. As music swells the viewer, the artists transform an average-looking blonde woman into a creation filled with make-up and hairspray. The video is on time-lapse, so what likely took over an hour to complete takes mere seconds to watch. After the transformation, the woman models for a photographer, as noted by the flashing lights. A photo is selected and then placed into photo editing software. Her neck is elongated, her hair expanded, her eyes enlarged along with a myriad of other small details to alter the image. The camera starts to zoom out and the viewer can see that the image is now on billboard overlooking a busy street. Then “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted” appears on screen. The video ends with the Dove self-esteem fund logo. This video serves as a way to inform viewers about the Dove fund and to speak out against the rampant use cosmetics and technology in order to alter women to appear as something they are not. They took a woman and made her into something that she could never be, with features not physically possible, but in a packaged way that made her seem normal nonetheless.

Amy again starts in a similar fashion to the other two videos. The video shows a young boy, roughly 12 in age riding his bike to a house. He sits outside saying, “Amy” repeatedly. He looks disappointed that she is not appearing. After it is clear that he has been waiting a while, “Amy can name 12 things wrong with her appearance.” Preceded by a pause, “He can’t name one” then flashes followed by “Sent to you by someone who thinks you’re beautiful” and the Dove fund logo. Amy is supposed to be a young girl who has been affected by the beauty industry. She is self-conscious and is likely seeing problems that others don’t actually see.

The Campaign’s Effect

The campaign received free advertising space from media coverage on national television shows that reached 30 million viewers. The Oprah Winfrey Show aired the campaign daily for a week straight. The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Today Show, The View and CNN also featured the campaign. Over the following year, profits from these advertisements increased dramatically and the campaign returned $3 for every $1 spent which is encouraging because is suggests that making profits and promoting ideas of positive beauty aren’t mutually-exclusive goals. In her book, Enlightened Sexism, Susan Douglas writes that the year that Dove started the Campaign for Real Beauty, their sales rose 12.5% and 10% the year after, hardly something to ignore. Clearly women were responding to their ad campaign. Women flocked to the company that were putting real women in their ads.

As a whole, Dove’s campaign for real beauty was a pioneering attempt to challenge the conceptions of beauty that are so limiting and harmful to women.

Campaign Critiques

In a world that is inundated with images that give women a narrow view of what the ideal body, the Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty is a refreshing change. It opens up the conversation about how young women are influenced by the media and how the media can distort images to give unrealistic expectations. However, the Dove campaign also falls victims to some of the old tricks such as consumerism and sexualization as means to empower women. Critics voiced concerns about the authenticity of the brand’s movement, their parent company’s questionable associations, and the actual product the ads are selling.

But, by going and buying these products, women were, and still are, falling victim to consumerism. Dove’s campaign is giving women a means to overcome the stick figure expectation. But, they must purchase their products to do so. In order to break free of the pressure from some companies, they buy products from another. Assumed power and control is only given through consumerism.

The Dove Brand’s parent company is Unilever which owns many off-shoot brands including AXE, Slimfast, and Fair and Lovely. AXE commercials depend heavily on sexist stereotypes and overtly sexualized women to sell their product. Slimfast is clearly in direct contradiction of the message of Dove campaign as it’s products perpetuate the same body-insecurity problems Dove’s is trying to fight. Fair and Lovely is a skin-lightening product that is marketed to dark-skinned women across the world. This product reinforces the stereotype that light skin and beauty are somehow related. While the creators of Dove’s campaign for real beauty may not be in the position to directly influence the actions of these other products, the mere association is enough to slightly tarnish the image of the campaign.

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Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign- Case Study

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The Dove brand is well-known to most people, specifically women. In addition to offering quality products, they also have inspiring commercials. Finding a company that is captivated by individuals rather than solely its bottom line can be quite challenging. Dove is a one-of-a-kind company that truly cares about women.

We all seemed to experience the sensation that our insecurity is devouring us inside and out. Individuals draw conclusions about other people’s bodies, particularly remarks that label them as obese, slim, beautiful, and other body-shaming attributes, without any remorse or reluctance. However, at this stage, we begin to comprehend other people’s opinions, which causes a sense of consciousness or insecurity. We persist to devalue other people’s lifestyles despite the adage that “Real beauty is found within.” If we don’t appreciate ourselves, who else will?

Real Beauty Campaign

To encourage women and young people to gain confidence, Dove launched the “Real Beauty Campaign” in 2004. Dove surveyed more than 3,000 women in ten different countries, initiating the Real Beauty campaign. The survey’s analysis indicated the depressing fact that only 2% of women thought they were attractive. Dove saw an opportunity to assist these women to develop a unique perspective on beauty and overcome the ubiquitous insecurities that many women experience.

The central thesis of the marketing campaign is that “beauty isn’t the absence of flaws, but the willingness to endure them while still feeling magnificent. Dove advises women to share photos of themselves digitally with the hashtag #mydovemessages to showcase how individuals, particularly young women, have found beauty and pride via Dove products. Social media is employed to propagate the messages in an attempt to elicit community support for the campaign, which is crucial for its success.

The Real Beauty Campaign as a whole stirred debate on women’s emancipation. It opened women’s eyes and gave them a sense of courage and self-assurance, which Dove desired.

Target Audience

Dove’s targeted audience on social media and digital platforms has predominantly focused on women who are proactive online. The company targeted females between the ages of 18 and 35 who appreciated natural, healthy cosmetic products. The prevalence of “selfies” was only appropriate for such socially active and self-conscious women.

Pros & Cons of Dove Real Beauty Campaign

The Dove Real Beauty Campaign’s benefits and drawbacks are mentioned beneath.

• The Dove campaign is acknowledged for igniting a debate about broadening the beauty criteria on a global basis. The campaign’s key advantage is that it confronts the unattainable ideals of beauty and advocates the notion of accepting oneself.
• Dove intended to revolutionize the advertising industry by addressing beauty stereotypes. They selected women who transcend the ideals of beauty. Real women proved to be distinctive and pleasant to their female audience, offering a fresh view within the media. The enormous media attention the campaign has received may be evidence of its success.
• The Unilever brand Fair & Lovely exhorted women to seek lighter skin and was largely aimed at individuals with darker complexion tones. This contradicts Dove’s objective of passively accepting the beauty of all women by manufacturing products that attempt to make them all appear the same.
• Dove is a Unilever brand, due to its affiliations with other companies, critics have disputed what the brand’s core mission entails.

In light of this notion of deceit, Unilever’s involvement with Dove might attract consumers to have ambiguous opinions about Dove’s marketing efforts. Customers may dispute Dove’s fidelity to its unified purpose.

Conclusion–

Real Beauty, a Dove campaign, is indeed ongoing. Irrespective of accusations, the campaign might be viewed as a favorable leap ahead. The message has to be pertinent in favor for the campaign to be viable, and the interaction must sustain. Dove nailed it in that manner since concerns regarding appearance and consciousness are increasingly dominant in the modern world, particularly when it pertains to photo editing and media platforms.

Audiences’ powerful emotional responses and tremendous shareability rates to The Real Beauty underscore the campaign’s immense success. The campaign succeeded since it made the viewers realize how significant the issue of women’s self-image is. Although with Dove, women were empowered to think about beauty in a new and distinct manner that was far more optimistic.

We appreciate your effort and time in reading the case study. Share your thoughts on Dove’s Real Beauty campaign in the comments section below.

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Dove’s “Real Beauty” Campaign: Body Positive Promotion or Genderwashing?

This case discusses the rapid growth of the now controversial “positive body image” promotional strategy, that some have suggested is “genderwashing,” whereby firms may engage with progressive gender and race issues in one brand’s promotional campaign while creating perceived contrary campaigns with that of other brands or campaigns that don’t seem to fit the body positive narrative. Specifically, this case examines the Dove Real Beauty campaign in conjunction with that of Axe Body Spray and Fair Lovely (all brands owned by Unilever) from a conceptual perspective. A conceptual model of a genderwashing is offered and potential managerial implications are articulated whereby it is posited that these campaigns can lead to consumer cynicism and a desire to cease purchases.

In 2004, Dove launched its “Campaign for Real Beauty.” Silvia Lagnado [1] , the global brand director for Dove stated at the time, “The Campaign for Real Beauty is a pro-beauty campaign in its most realistic sense, furthering the idea that real beauty comes in many shapes, sizes and ages. It's a campaign designed to spark debate about (and hopefully widen) the current definition of beauty” (p. 20). Over a decade later, Dove continues to promote its brand under this concept and campaign. Throughout the campaign’s history, Dove has used various promotions, including multimedia advertisements, short films, billboard, television and magazine ads, and the creation of an interactive and educational “Real Beauty” website. Lisa Klauser, Dove’s Vice President of marketing shared services stated, “Because we’re out to influence pop culture, you see our brand taking a very distinctive point of view…” (as cited in Neff, 2006 [2] ). Dove soon realized that taking this stance in their IMC strategy generated a buzz on social media, in high school classrooms, in feminist literature and on college campuses. The resulting publicity might have given Dove a response much greater than any paid placement alone could achieve. The 60 second Dove: Evolution spot which ran during the 2006 Super Bowl “generated about 90 million impressions, but pre-and post-game publicity produced 400 million, even though the ad only aired one time on regular TV” [2] . In 2013, this same strategy again proved successful with the 60 second spot Real Beauty Sketches . Receiving nearly 135 million views after going viral across the Internet, Advertising Age reported that the spot was the most-viewed video ad campaign of 2013 [3] . As a result of taking a “progressive” and “positive body image” point of view, the “Campaign for Real Beauty” has created massive exposure for the Unilever-owned brand.

While this campaign and others like it have been wildly popular as marketing has traditionally used “idealized” beauty as something to aspire to [4] , there has been some negative fallout and criticism related to it. Much of the criticism stems from stereotypically gendered campaigns in Unilever’s portfolio, as well as perceived problematic attributes of the Dove ads themselves. More recently, in 2017, Dove ran into a wealth of controversy with their Facebook campaign that appeared to depict a woman of color “taking off her top” after using Dove to reveal a Caucasian woman underneath.

See the Dove advertisement image .

Many consumers, as they posted on social media, considered this to be racially insensitive and in line with another Dove ad that had similar claims of insensitivity. This one appeared to imply that darker skin was undesirable and that Caucasian skin was exemplary of beauty.

See the Dove body wash advertisement image .

Some critics have labeled practices like these genderwashing . This is where firms may engage with progressive gender issues in one brand’s promotional campaign while concurrently creating contrary campaigns with that of other brands and/or engaging in contrary business practices. Critics believe this may be an attempt on the part of the firm to leverage negative publicity about ethically troubling campaigns, with a more “feel-good,” “progressive” campaign nested in a corporate social responsibility (CSR) imperative.

Dove’s first stage of the campaign began in 2004 with the aim of “broadening the definition of beauty by challenging stereotypical conventions.” [5] . They did this by presenting images of women who, on the surface, appeared outside of these conventions on billboards and in print ads with statements that posed questions like “wrinkled? or wonderful?,” “fat? or fit?,” “grey? or gorgeous?,” and “flawed? or flawless?” [5] . To accompany the launch of the campaign, Dove released “The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report,” after commissioning and supporting research that aimed “to further the global understanding of women, beauty, and well-being—and the relationship between them” [6] . As Johnston and Taylor [7] explain “this format provided a space to debate feminized beauty ideals and was a win-win situation for Dove: it could promote its products as beauty solutions and at the same time express concern with narrow beauty ideals” (p. 952). In 2005, Dove expanded the campaign and launched their “Real Women in the Spotlight” advertisements, which “set out to debunk the stereotypes that only thin is beautiful” [5] . In advertisements, Dove had individuals stand in simple white bras and underwear below the phrase “real women with real bodies.” Using women that appeared to vary in race, height, weight, breast size and hair color, Dove presented a diverse group of individuals who were not stereotypical models in attempts of challenging society’s general understanding of beauty.

Dove continued its objective of making “real” women feel more beautiful in 2006 with the creation of the Little Girls short film. This was soon followed by the short film Evolution . That film, which went viral, “was created to expose the unrealistic expectations of beauty perpetuated in media all around us” [5] . In 2007, the spot, Onslaught was released, and later that year, “Dove teamed up with renowned photographer Annie Leibovitz to create an empowering celebration of beautiful women over 50” introducing their “pro-age” portion of the campaign [5] .

In 2013, the spot, Real Beauty Sketches became wildly popular. Dove states that Sketches “reveals a universal truth about women's perception of their own beauty,” concluding that women are too self-critical and they are more beautiful than they know [5] . Dove’s latest installment of the campaign includes the short films Selfie, Patches, and Mirrors and the social media campaign “#beautyis.”

Dove adds another dimension to the “Campaign for Real Beauty” through the Dove Self-Esteem Fund. By utilizing what Johnson and Taylor [7] term “grassroots partnering,” the fund has partnered with the Global Advisory Board, the Boys and Girls Club, Girls Inc., and the American Girl Scouts “to support efforts that help raise the self-esteem of girls and young women and help them combat their hang-ups about the way they look,” according to Dove Global brand director Lagnado [1] . Through these partnerships, Dove reports that the fund has been successful in reaching over 11 million girls with self-esteem education and hopes to reach 15 million by 2015 [5] . By linking a social mission to their beauty brand, Johnston and Taylor [7] explain how by promoting itself as a progressive force for women, Dove has been able to associate itself with feminist ideals, engage in grassroots partnering and implement self-esteem programs, and receive widespread praise in the popular media for its “progressive actions.” (p. 943).

While Dove states the goal of the Real Beauty Campaign is to challenge the normative standards of Western beauty, the campaign’s message is not as transparent as presented. Dove set out to represent “real women;” however, the individuals featured in the campaign are not necessarily representative of the “average” female population. Most efforts of the campaign predominantly feature women that are, by conventional norms, facially “attractive” and caucasian. The models used “range in dress sizes from 6 to 12. While larger than the average fashion model (size 4), they are still smaller than the average American woman, who is a size 14 (p. 942) [7] .” While describing Real Beauty’s Sketches video in her blog post on Tumblr, critic Jazz Price noted, "When it comes to the diversity of the main participants: all four are Caucasian, three are blonde with blue eyes, all are thin, and all are young (the oldest appears to be 40). The majority of the non-featured participants are thin, young white women as well. …out of 6:36 minutes of footage, people of color are onscreen for less than 10 seconds" (as cited in Griner, 2013 [8] ). In Sketches , only one Asian woman, three black women and one black man are shown. When featured, two of the black women are briefly seen and then only when they are negatively describing themselves. And, as we previously mentioned, the controversy in 2017 with the Facebook campaign led to increased problems. These types of criticisms have led some to believe that the Dove campaign is not entirely genuine or inclusive.

Overall, Dove’s Real Beauty campaign has elicited reactions ranging from incredibly positive to extremely critical. Many applaud Dove for effectively “reaching a mainstream audience, [which is] often difficult when dealing with something that might be considered a political issue” (p. 46) [9] . The campaign has been praised for taking such a bold stance as a beauty brand. Dove has been admired for opting to a make change and using its wide degree of influence in positive ways. However, Dove has come under major criticism for its engagement in contrary-type practices out of the public eye. Very few consumers know that the firm that owns Dove, Unilever, also owns (or owned during the campaign) a wide range of other companies, most notably Axe Body Spray and Slim-Fast. The ads and positioning for two these brands specifically are not viewed as empowering; some might say they’re offensive and gendered. Slim-Fast is a “quick weight loss” product that routinely makes it appear that “slimmer is better” and therefore constructs an image for American women that slimmer is more attractive. Fair and Lovely is a product sold to Asian women to make their skin lighter, more closely resembling western Caucasian women (and thereby “more attractive”). Additionally, Unilever also owns Suave, another beauty brand. As Dove released their Evolution film, Suave began their Pretty Mommy campaign, which “plays on moms’ insecurities about letting themselves go.” [10] Donna Charlton-Perrin, the Suave creative director, stated “Dove is talking about something that’s very internal, about your self-esteem… Suave is just asking you to make a very surface change,” which is promoting a message contradictory to Dove’s [10] . An editorial published by Advertising Age argues, "perhaps [Unilever] shouldn’t be crowing about virtues in the communications for one brand if it’s preaching vices for another” (2007, 16). “Unilever is the beauty industry. To point fingers at other brands and at the same time be taking advantage of the same horrific marketing other companies are doing is incredibly hypocritical” [11] . Mahdawi [12] argues that companies like Unilever have been using women’s rights as a marketing ploy and “feminism has become a great way to sell stuff… these manipulative videos are produced to make us choose Dove products over other products—and that’s it.” Pelley [13] states, “It’s also offensive that this campaign subtly blames women for their insecurities and ignores its own role in helping create them. The message seems to be, “We don’t need to make better products or change our advertising; it’s you who needs to change your thinking.” As such, beauty is still being perpetuated as the value in which women evaluate their self-worth.

Some believe the Dove Real Beauty Campaign exemplifies genderwashing . Believed to have been first coined by Burk [14] relating to Walmart’s handling of gender issues, genderwashing is a term “to convey the same meaning ‘greenwashing’ evokes when its used to describe companies that try to look environmentally responsible – while doing little or nothing to actually change themselves or improve the environment.” As Laufer [15] explains, greenwashing is a strategy firms use to manage their reputations with the public to hide deviant behavior, obscure problems or allegations, reattribute blame and/or appear as a leader. Laufer [15] believes that these corporations “engage in complex strategies and counter strategies that serve to shift the focus and attention away from the firm, create confusion, undermine credibility, criticize viable alternatives, and deceptively posture firm objectives, commitments and accomplishments” (p. 255) [15] . Further, the problematic use of sustainability as a promotional theme to make consumers feel guilty as opposed to firm engagement with sustainable practice has been mentioned by many in the literature [16] [17] .

Genderwashing may be predicated on two specific concepts. The first, commodity feminism, turns feminism into a commodity. Goldman, Heath and Smith [18] explain:

They further state, “to signify feminism, advertisers assemble signs which connote independence, participation in the work force, individual freedom, and self-control. Commodity feminism presents feminism as a style—a semiotic abstraction—a set of visual sign values that say who you are” (p. 337). Yet by converting feminism into a commercial advertising strategy, commodity feminism “depoliticizes the feminist message” (p. 87) [19] .

Similarly, Johnston and Taylor [7] introduce the term feminist consumerism as

This approach has the possibility of unsettling gender norms only if employed in a consumer-oriented society. Similarly, based on analysis of Nike’s campaigns towards women, the concept “celebrity feminism” termed by Cole and Hribar [20] explains how, through discourses of free will, Nike defined itself as “pro-women by positioning itself through the themes of being natural, authenticity, and self-growth. By defining itself in relation to these issues, Nike establishes itself as a socially responsibility corporation, as a symbol of collective progress and possibility” (p. 366).

Feminist consumerism does not typically center around more radical goals of feminism “such as decentering the role of beauty in women’s lives, processing negative emotions, or challenging men’s relationship with feminine beauty,” but instead on the main capitalist goal of purchase and profit (p. 961) [7] . “As such, feminist consumerism tends to obscure and minimize both structural and institutionalized gender inequalities that are difficult to resolve and that might cause negative emotional associations with brands,” which in turn would negatively affect sales and brand loyalty (p. 961) [7] . Similarly, Nike’s narrative of “just do it” “turns on a notion of individual choice that limits what and who we recognize. In this case, the conditions of everyday life are not so much challenged as they are reinforced.” (p. 366) [20] By not radically positioning their brand, a company ends up reinforcing the status quo instead of challenging it. In relation to the Dove campaign, Johnston and Taylor [7] conclude that the brand encourages women to engage in dissent by closely associating with corporate marketing campaigns and consumption behavior. They note that while accessible and positive on the surface, Dove’s “critique of beauty ideology is diluted by its contradictory imperative to promote self-acceptance and at the same time increase sales by promoting women’s consumption of products that encourage conformity to feminine beauty ideology (p.962).” They go on to mention that the campaign equates self-acceptance and beauty through the use of Dove products. Thus, Dove, while promoting a message is really promoting itself and encouraging consumption of “pro-beauty” products. Many argue that issues related to negative body image were brought about by corporate marketing campaigns – engaging women in a pursuit of perfection or alteration, facilitated by specifically marketed products.

Closely related, conceptually, to feminist consumerism and commodity feminism are cause-related marketing and corporate social responsibility (CSR). Brønn and Vrioni [21] state cause-related marketing as, “the process of formulating and implementing marketing activities that are characterized by contributing a specific amount to a designated non-profit effort that, in turn, causes customers to engage in revenue-providing exchanges… … to tie a company and its products to a cause. (p. 214)” They mention further that it is a mechanism to build equity and gain competitive advantage.

Barkay [22] explains “the new approach to corporate social responsibility (CSR) stipulates that the pursuit and adoption of socially responsible practices are not simply the morally right thing to do but also a profitable business strategy (p. 279).” Likewise, Drumwright [23] posits that “there is not a company in the U.S. or the world that would spend money on advertising in a way that is not economic. The only reason, absolutely the only reason, that money is spent on advertising is to move people toward economic payoffs for the product and the company (p. 74).”

Brønn and Vrioni [21] contend that a corporation’s “association with a non-profit organization can generate positive media coverage, build a reputation of compassion and caring for a company, enhance its integrity, enhance employees’ motivation and productivity and consumers’ preferences (p. 212).” Cause-related marketing as a marketing strategy has proven to be successful. “One-third of Americans say that after price and quality, a company’s responsible business practices are the most important factor in deciding whether or not to buy a brand, and if price and quality are equal, they are more likely to switch to a brand which has a cause-related marketing benefit” (p. 212) [21] .

There may be clear positives to both the firm and society when embracing CSR and cause-related marketing, however, they may be overshadowed by the commodity feminism and feminist consumerism. When taken in tandem, all four concepts may underlie the core facets of the perception of genderwashing. On the surface a positive body image campaign may invoke the positive aspects of CSR and cause-related marketing, however, those positives may quickly become overshadowed when consumers are exposed to ads, by the same firm, who appears to have contrary messaging and strategic intent. Thus, concurrent promotional campaigns may reduce the use of the gender variable to a commodity.

As Johnston and Taylor [7] posit, feminist consumerism employs themes of empowerment to women but focuses on consumption as the primary source of affirmation and social change. This, too, is potentially problematic as they contend that this strategy may lead to avoidance of gender issues on a deeper, collective, consciousness-raising level. The ultimate goal of feminist consumerism is purchase and profit.

Given the fact that Unilever concurrently engages in promotional campaigns for Axe Body Spray, Fair & Lovely and Slim Fast (at the time of this study) as it does Dove, the idea that the “body positive” strategy may indeed be a type of “Defense Barrier” whereby criticism leveled against the firm is deflected, at least somewhat, by the Dove campaign. This idea of “defense” is based on the wealth of negative comments and perceptions about Axe, Fair & Lovely and Slim Fast that can be found in the course of examining discourse online. These publicly articulated negative thoughts and feelings go as far back as 2007. It could be that the Dove gender-oriented campaign is a strategy that not only looks to increase sales from a CSR/commodity feminism/consumer feminism perspective, but also assists in helping alter or compensate for negative perceptions about the firm for marketing products in tandem with controversial ads that have been criticized, for years, by many in the feminist community. Skin lightening cream and diet aids have been the target of many feminists for decades. Initiating a positive body image campaign allows the firm to deflect negative criticisms and attributions, at least somewhat. Brand equity lost in the mind of the consumer from one controversial campaign may be regained from another.

The Dove campaign came strongly out of the gate, challenging a wealth of gender-related norms. The campaign became an overnight success on social media and benefitted from a wealth of evangelizers. The campaign has been extolled in the popular and industry press. Upon further review, however, Unilever has found itself in a precarious situation, as, over time, literature has demonstrated clear issues below the surface of the campaign that relate to patriarchal expectations shaped by conventional beauty ideals [24] and the “exploitation” of participant labor as part of the social media strategy [25] . Further, it may be that the heart of the campaign’s strategy to stir deep brand loyalty is sullied, in the minds of some consumers, by its upholding of more traditionally-minded beauty myths and expectations in its products marketed overseas. This becomes even more troublesome for the parent firm when a campaign predicated on brand performance in social media [26] becomes potentially truncated and disrupted when the online community comes to the revelation that they’ve been deceived or that a truth has been obfuscated (that Axe Body Spray and Fair & Lovely are also under the Unilever umbrella) or that subsequent parts of a campaign are very problematic.

The case of Dove demonstrates some key similarities between the strategy some have labeled as “genderwashing” and the phenomena know as “greenwashing.” Delmas and Burbano [27] define greenwashing as a common scenario where firms mislead consumers about sustainability benefits inherent in an offered product or service; where there is intersection between poor environmental performance and positive communication about environmental performance. Additionally the practice may entail exaggerated information about firm environmental performance and/or concern. Even as some note that the process of greenwashing may have decreased since the 1990s [28] , Delmas and Burbano [27] found that greenwashing has deeply negative effects on consumer confidence. Going further, they also posit that the practice can harm investor confidence in the socially-responsible capital market and can open the firm to lawsuits and challenges from concerned organizations and government entities who believe they are being misled.

Consumers may find a similar intersection between poor or questionable gender-related performance and positive communication about gender-related performance when it comes to Dove. When taken with the fact that consumers, overwhelmed by CSR claims in today’s economy, have a difficult time identifying authentically responsible firms [29] firms accused of genderwashing may find themselves with particularly negative consequences that both erode consumer trust and add to more CSR-oriented clutter in the marketplace. More clutter and ambiguity in the CSR realm may lead to an inevitable turn away from CSR strategies as firms learn that the costs may not outweigh the benefits.

Ultimately, the discourse about the Dove campaign demonstrates that there is still a great deal of controversy surrounding the issue of gender and imagery in the world of marketing communications. Weight and female body image continue to become an area of concern and the slim female body continues to be the opposite of the modern-day example of idealized beauty [30] . Social marketing campaigns and cause-related marketing related to body image continue to be overly simplistic [31] and, potentially, short-sighted based on the importance many consumers, especially those in Gen Y [32] , place on the message. The Dove campaign, while very successful, may eventually lead to the parent brand’s demand as more consumers become informed of the connection between brands such as Axe and Dove – once largely hidden from the public – now more widely know.

• While there are certainly many who are critical of the Dove campaign, clearly the campaign has gained a great deal of traction and has been going strong many years in the media. Does the criticism negate the positives the campaign brings in terms of gender issues in today's consumer society?
• Could Dove improve the campaign and still have the same level of impact and ability to break through media clutter? If yes, how so? If no, explain why not.
• Is it possible for a for-profit firm to create a positive campaign that helps society but also assists the firm in gaining increased revenues or are these two goals really mutually exclusive in today's environment?
• Can mass media created by a for profit firm be a revolutionary tool?
• Jeffrey S. Podoshen, Department of Business, Organizations and Society, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA; Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, College of Business, Camden, New Jersey
• Sarah Wheaton, Department of Business, Organizations and Society, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA

When re-using this resource, please attribute as follows: Created and developed by Jeffrey S. Podoshen and Sarah Wheaton of Franklin and Marshall College. Support provided by Franklin and Marshall College Hackman Scholar's Program, the Open and Affordable Textbooks Project at Rutgers University, and Teagle Foundation.

. The full text of this license may be found here: ↑ 1.0 1.1 Lagnado, S. (2004). Getting real about beauty. Advertising Age, 75 (49), 20. Retrieved from http://www.adage.com/ ↑ 2.0 2.1 Neff, J. (2006). A real beauty: Dove’s viral makes big splash for no cash. Advertising Age, 77 (44), 1-45. Retrieved from http://www.adage.com/ ↑ Toure, M. (2013). Unilever’s ‘Dove Real Beauty Sketches’ is the viral campaign of the year. Advertising Age. Retrieved from http://www.adage.com/ ↑ Joy, A. & Venkatesh, A. (1994). Postmodern, feminism and the body: The visible and the invisible in consumer research. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 11 (4), 333-357. doi:10.1016/0167-8116(94)90011-6 ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6 Unilever. (2014). Real Beauty. In Our Mission. Retrieved from http://www . dove.us/Our-Mission/Real-Beauty/default.aspx/ ↑ Etcoff, N., Orbach, S., Scott, J., & D’Agostino, H. (2004). The real truth about beauty: A global report. Dove, 1-47. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 7.5 7.6 7.7 7.8 Johnston, J. & Taylor, J. (2008). Feminist consumerism and fat activists: A comparative study of grassroots activism and the Dove Real Beauty Campaign. Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 33 (4), 941-966. doi: 10.1086/528849 ↑ Griner, D. (2013). 5 Reasons Why Some Critics are Hating on Dove Real Beauty Sketches Video. Adweek, April 19, Retrieved from https://www.adweek.com/creativity/5-reasons-why-some-critics-are-hating-doves-real-beauty-sketches-video-148772/ ↑ Harrison, P. (2008). How sincere is Dove? Deakin Business Review, 1 (1), 45-47. http://dro.deakin.edu.au/view/DU:30019009 ↑ 10.0 10.1 Neff, J. (2007). Unilever: Don’t let beauty get too real. Advertising Age, 78 (16), 1-42. Retrieved from http://www.adage.com/ ↑ Neff, J. (2007). An onslaught against ‘Onslaught’: Dove viral draws heat from critics. Advertising Age, 78 (47), 3-28. Retrieved from http://www.adage.com/ ↑ Mahdawi, A. (2014). How feminism became a great way to sell stuff. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/ . ↑ Pelley, V. (2014). 5 things Unilever could do to actually help women instead of making more insipid ‘Real Beauty’ videos. Advertising Age. Retrieved from http://www.adage.com/ ↑ Burke, M. (2011). Gender washing at Walmart. Huffington Post. Retrieved from http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martha-burk/gender-washing-at-walmart_b_964942.html ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Laufer, W. S. (2003). Social accountability and corporate greenwashing. Journal of Business Ethics, 43, 253-261. doi: 10.1023/A:1022962719299 ↑ Ourahmoune, N., Binninger, A., & Robert, I. (2014). Brand narratives, sustainability, and gender: A socio-semiotic approach. Journal of Macromarketing, 34 (3), 313-341.doi:10.1177/0276146714528335 ↑ Prothero, A. & Fitchett, J. (2000). Greening capitalism: Opportunities for a green commodity,” Journal of Macromarketing, 20 (1), 46-55. doi: 10.1177/0276146700201005 ↑ Goldman, R., Heath, D., & Smith, S. L. (1991). Commodity feminism. Critical Studies in Mass Communication, 8 (3), 333-351. doi: 10.1080/15295039109366801 ↑ Murray, D. P. (2013). Branding “real” social change in Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty. Feminist Media Studies, 13 (1), 83-101. doi: 10.1080/14680777.2011.647963 ↑ 20.0 20.1 Cole, C. L., & Hribar, A. (1995). Celebrity feminism: Nike Style post-Fordism, transcendence, and consumer power. Sociology of Sport Journal, 12, 347-369. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 Brønn, P. S., & Vrioni, A. B. (2001). Corporate social responsibility and cause-related marketing: An overview. International Journal of Advertising, 20, 207-222. Retrieved from http://www.internationaljournalofadvertising.com ↑ Barkay, T. (2011). When business and community meet: A case study of Coca-Cola. Critical Sociology, 39 (2), 277-293. doi:10.1177/0896920511423112 ↑ Drumwright, M. E. (1996). Company advertising with a social dimension: The role of noneconomic criteria. Journal of Marketing, 60, 71-87. Retrieved from http://www.ama.org/ ↑ Lachover, E. & Brandes, S.B. (2009). A beautiful campaign? Analysis of public discourses in Israel surrounding the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, Feminist Media Studies, 9 (3), 301-316. doi: 10.1080/14680770903068266 ↑ Duffy, B.E. (2010). Empowerment through endorsement? Polysemic meaning in Dove’s user-generated advertising, Communication, Culture and Critique, 3 (1), 26-43. doi: 10.1111/j.1753-9137.2009.01056.x ↑ Singh, S. & Sonnenburg, S. (2012). Brand performance in social media. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 26 (4), 189-197. doi: 10.1016/j.intmar.2012.04.001 ↑ 27.0 27.1 Delmas, M.A., & Burbano, V.C. (2011). The drivers of greenwashing. California Management Review, 54 (1), 64-87. Retrieved from http://haas.berkeley.edu/News/cmr/index.html ↑ Prothero, A., McDonagh, P. and Dobscha, S. (2010). “Is green the new black? Reflections on a green commodity discourse,” Journal of Macromarketing, 30 (2), 147-159. doi: 10.1177/0276146710361922 ↑ Parguel, B., Benoit-Moreau, F., & Larceneux, F. (2011). How sustainability ratings might deter ‘greenwashing’: A closer look at ethical corporate communication. Journal of Business Ethics, 102 (1), 15-28. doi: 10.1007/s10551-011-0901-2 ↑ LeBesco, K. (2004). Revolting bodies? The struggle to redefine fat identity. Amherst: University of Massachussettes Press. ↑ Gurrieri, L., Previte, J. & Brace-Govan, J. (2012). Women’s bodies as sites of control: Inadvertent stigma and exclusion in social marketing. Journal of Macromarketing, 33 (2), 128-143. doi:10.1177/0276146712469971 ↑ Hyllegard, K., Yan, R., Ogle, J. & Attmann, J. (2010). The influence of gender, social cause, charitable support, and message appeal on Gen Y’s responses to cause-related marketing. Journal of Marketing Management, 27 (1), 100-123. Post image:  By coffeebeanworks via Pixabay .   CC0 Creative Commons . Who is your Global Marketer of 2024? Nominate now Case study | Dove: Show Us. It's On Us FMCG giant spurs brands to be more inclusive by funding diverse casting costs This article was originally published in  Contagious I/O on 26 March 2021 Article details Contagious i/o, share this post. Unilever-owned beauty brand Dove is funding the cost of more diverse casting in ads to help the advertising industry be more inclusive. Show Us. It’s On Us launched in South Africa and continues Dove’s mission to challenge the current perception of beauty.  In 2019, Dove partnered with Getty Images and media agency Girlgaze on  Project #ShowUs . Here, Dove and Getty created a library of more than 5,000 photographs of 179 women from 39 countries, featuring women of all shapes, ethnicities and abilities, along with traditionally perceived ‘visual imperfections’. Advertisers and media owners were then encouraged to view, license and use the images in campaigns. Project #ShowUs stemmed from the fact that 70% of women don’t feel represented in advertising. Dove’s research shows that ‘if women don’t feel represented, it can hold them back from reaching their full potential. The effects are vast, negatively impacting health, career and relationships.’ Since 2019, however, representation in ads hasn’t improved very much, so Dove, working with agency LOLA MullenLowe​​​​​​​, Madrid, is pushing the idea further with Show Us. It’s On Us. In South Africa, Dove invited women from Project #ShowUs to create casting films. Each of them had a message: ‘If you choose me, and show me as I really am, Dove will cover the cost of my appearance fee.’ The films were then sent out to international casting calls, encouraging advertisers and media buyers to be more inclusive and representative in their depiction of women. According to the agency, so far Krispy Kreme, Nedbank, Cif and Magnum have cast women from the Show Us. It’s On Us campaign. ‘By giving brands and companies the tools to show a more diverse representation of beauty, we are helping to change the way women are represented,’ says Dove global vice-president Sophie van Ettinger, ‘which is proven to have a positive impact on how confident women feel in their appearance.’ Contagious Insight  / The next step /  In Jane Cunningham and Philippa Roberts’ book,  Brandsplaining: Why Marketing is (Still) Sexist and How to Fix It,  the   authors dive into brands’ many shortcomings when it comes to marketing to women. While brands like Dove and  Always  have progressed gender standards in advertising, the mission is in no way complete. Casting is more diverse than it used to be but the inclusion can often feel disingenuous, a box-ticking exercise, they explain. Worse, ads will show average size models but make a song and dance about them showing flesh. Thankfully, Cunningham and Roberts have identified a new model of brands that are getting right: companies by women, for women. Notably for Dove, these successful brands treat ‘beauty and fashion as acts of creative self-expression, not a means of covering up or blending in’ and ‘they don’t define their audience in relation to men but on their own terms’. By starting and ending this campaign with women and celebrating their many looks, Dove avoids the common pitfalls outlined above, and by sharing its tools for diverse casting positions itself as a leader progressing representation that other brands can actively follow. Talk is cheap /  Dove has indeed challenged beauty standards for decades. However, what we’ve seen recently is a range of campaigns that push its Real Beauty purpose a step further. Show Us. It’s On Us builds upon the brand’s 2019  Show Us  campaign. And in 2020, Dove  created  a coalition in the US to pass a law against race-based hair discrimination. Previously, Dove’s  campaigns  focused on driving awareness and informing the audience about misrepresentation. Now, education and awareness become tangible change and steps toward eradication. Such proactive campaigns show that Dove realises it’s not enough to continuously talk about the numerous issues that women experience; actions speak louder than words. Child’s play /  Dove’s ownership of Real Beauty is  age-old . However, challenger brands such as  Glossier and Drunk Elephant  could make Dove’s positioning on the subject seem a bit obsolete. So it’s imperative that Dove defends and defines its connection to Real Beauty, and it does that here by facilitating brands in other sectors to combat misrepresentation. As the market leader, Dove has the capacity to push Real Beauty to the next level, and do so in a way a challenger brand simply could not. Young brands may have  shaken up  the market with new products and communication models, but with Show Us. It’s On Us, Dove has shown what a market leader can do. To read more about Dove’s story and its purpose around Real Beauty, read our  Brand Spotlight . Associated topics 340 COMMENTS Case Study: Dove's "Real Beauty" Brand Campaign In the world of skincare, Unilever's Dove has not only solidified its position with products promising moisture and softness but has also reshaped the beauty industry through its groundbreaking "Real Beauty" campaign, launched in 2004.This article delves into the multifaceted facets of Dove's campaign, exploring its inception, objectives, social impact, marketing mix analysis, key ... A Complete Case Study On Marketing Strategy of Dove Dove started it's marketing campaigns in 1957 with the "Simple Face Test" and has come a long way since to the "Campaign of Real Beauty". Their ads were made with the intention of changing the norms. Another advertising campaign called "#ChooseBeautiful", showed how feeling beautiful and confident comes from within. Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty: How its 20 years changed marketing An early Real Beauty billboard in London in 2004. Not many campaigns make it 20 years, as Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty has, marking an anniversary this week with marketers ringing the opening ... Dove: Maintaining a Brand with Purpose Details. Transcript. December 22, 2020. Unilever's Dove soap became a brand with purpose when it launched the "Campaign for Real Beauty" to combat media-driven stereotypes of female beauty ... PDF Authentic expression of Real Beauty catapults Dove to 163 million advertising has been an integral part of the Dove brand's DNA—dating back to the introduction of the Dove Beauty Bar in 1957. Dove launched the Campaign for Real Beauty in 2004 based on the findings of a major global study, The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report. The brand From Cause Marketing To A Greater Mission: How Dove Created A ... To change how the world sees and treats Black men, Dove Men+Care partnered with the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) to create the Commit to C.A.R.E. (Care About Racial Equity) Now ... Brand is Culture: A Modern Dove Case Study In fact, I'd wager that most university marketing courses in the late 2000s taught the Dove "real beauty" campaign as a case study. Along with that DeBeers installment with the dead roses ... Dove: Evolution of a Brand Abstract. Examines the evolution of Dove from functional brand to a brand with a point of view after Unilever designated it as a masterbrand, and expanded its portfolio to cover entries into a number of sectors beyond the original bath soap category. The development causes the brand team to take a fresh look at the cliches of the beauty industry. Dove In 2003 Dove set out to make beauty a source of confidence, not anxiety, for women. ... Subscribe to receive instant access to the Effie Worldwide library of finalist and award-winning case studies. Learn more > 2019 WINNER 5 FOR 50 5 FOR 50 Dove Dove - Campaign for Real Beauty RAN IN: CLIENT. Unilever. AGENCY. Ogilvy ... Dove and Real Beauty: Building a Brand with Purpose Rigorous evaluations demonstrated positive impact in self-esteem and body image while driving a decade of consecutive sales growth for Dove, ultimately becoming Unilever's biggest brand. Yet the challenge of deciding how to allocate funds between advertising the product and conducting educational programs to deliver social impact remained. Dove on how it created an influencer community Dove and Collectively have won the Influencer Partnership category at The Drum Awards for Social Media. Here is the award-winning case study. ... Dove has pioneered creator-led marketing ... Dove: The Rise of a Purpose Led Brand Journey of Dove to a purpose driven brand : Stand with Consumers to stand out of competitors. It all started with a market study of 3,000+ women from 10 different countries on how they perceived beauty. What was touted as an attempt to rejuvenate the brand paved a momentous shift from "product-centric advertising" to "consumer-centric ... How Dove's Real Beauty campaign won, and nearly lost, its audience Dove's Real Beauty campaign is one of the most iconic and influential marketing initiatives in the beauty industry. But how did it manage to resonate with millions of women, and what challenges did it face along the way? Find out in this insightful article from PR Week, the leading source of news and analysis on the public relations sector. Dove's Real Beauty Campaign: An Incomplete History This article analyzes the Dove Real Beauty campaign. Learn about how Unilever's soap brand Dove uses graphic design, marketing strategy, & cause campaigns. ... campaign can serve as a case study ... Dove Real Beauty Sketches There are many obstacles to creating a global currency for measuring radio advertising effectiveness - has managed to tackle all of them." In 2013 Dove Soap launched a successful viral marketing campaign called 'Dove Real Beauty Sketches'. Colourtext was commissioned by Twitter to find out why so many of its users loved and shared Dove's ads. Case Study: Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty Philippe Harousseau, dove's marketing manager noted that the Dove campaign sought to challenge the stereotypical beauty of young, tall and blond, and rather change the way beauty is perceived by emphasizing the beauty of each woman. ... As evident in Dove's case study, which is very blatantly focused on the economic advantages of this ... Dove's Real Beauty Campaign- Case Study To encourage women and young people to gain confidence, Dove launched the "Real Beauty Campaign" in 2004. Dove surveyed more than 3,000 women in ten different countries, initiating the Real ... Dove: Facebook ads case study Dove used Facebook Groups to digitize and share its Self-Esteem Curriculum with parents - improving their confidence in talking to their children about self-esteem, body image and more. 82% surveyed said they were more confident talking to their child about self-esteem. 86% surveyed agree the partnership positively impacted their communities. Dove's "Real Beauty" Campaign: Body Positive ... In 2004, Dove launched its "Campaign for Real Beauty." Silvia Lagnado , the global brand director for Dove stated at the time, "The Campaign for Real Beauty is a pro-beauty campaign in its most realistic sense, furthering the idea that real beauty comes in many shapes, sizes and ages.It's a campaign designed to spark debate about (and hopefully widen) the current definition of beauty ... Dove Dove is spearheading the #NoDigitalDistortion movement, urging people to reject the new Bold Glamour filter. Developed by Ogilvy and DAVID, the influencer-le... Case study Unilever-owned beauty brand Dove is funding the cost of more diverse casting in ads to help the advertising industry be more inclusive. Show Us. It's On Us launched in South Africa and continues Dove's mission to challenge the current perception of beauty. In 2019, Dove partnered with Getty Images and media agency Girlgaze on Project #ShowUs. Case Study 1, Marketing Strategies of Dove In the case of Dove, when Dove was still an individual brand, the emphasis of its marketing communication lied heavily on its functional superiority, such as better moisturizing effects. However, when Dove was elevated to a Master Brand, this focus on functionality no longer worked because functionality signified different meanings in different ... assignment essay homework paper phd report resume review speech thesis