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January 01, 2005
Campaign for Real Beauty
Cosmetics and fashion, I have to admit are categories that have always baffled me, especially from the standpoint of true product and competitive differentiation. I know I have no fashion sense at all so I never felt up to commenting or judging most campaigns in these categories. But over the holidays my wife pointed out a new campaign that I plain old admire.
Amidst all the talk of even presidential candidates using Botox to look youthful, in one of many striking and beautifully photographed ads "Wrinkled vs. Wonderful", Dove does not specifically promote Dove soap, but challenges us to think differently about our definition of what is beautiful in Women. The "Campaign for Real Beauty" plays prominently on their website and states its mission clearly: to make women feel beautiful everyday by widening today's stereotypical view of beauty and inspiring women to take great care of themselves.
The campaign has even generated a lot of attention on the blogsphere:
- Wonderbranding points the campaign out as one reflects "the needs and values of real women" and that other companies in the category can learn from.
- Big Fat Blog's entry generated a string of "Right On" commentary.
- A romance novelist (think plunging necklines), even endorsed the campaign passionately, saying "It has been years since I bought Dove products, but as a result of this, I'm doing all I can to help support them. I know that their campaign is a marketing tool, but I believe it is also going to help a lot of women learn to accept themselves as who they are. For that reason, I applaud the genius who came up with this idea!"
- Conversely, Greedy Girl, although intrigued thinks these kind of campaigns backfire, "In my experience, women tend to respond best to pictures of attractive, natural looking women - not overweight or unattractive women. Female consumers may claim otherwise, but their money doesn’t follow those claims...Effective advertising is about making people envision a positive future for themselve, not about making them look in a mirror under fluorescent lights." Also noting that even Dove may bea bit skeptical of the effectiveness of using older less "perfect models". In an ad for Dove shampoo the models may not be blonde but they thin and gorgeous.
Regardless of how sincere their intentions (of course this is a marketing campaign), it seems to me to be breaking through. My wife found it refreshing and so did many other women over 20 I know. She made the observation that perhaps Dove really understands where their target has moved. Dove has been around as a brand for a long time, young people may not think it's cool anyway so turning to the getting older audience may make a lot of sense.
Anyway I like it. I think it is provokotive and breakthrough (just be careful Dove, if your target gets devoted to this campaign and more loyal to the brand because of it, don't turn around and revert to worshiping the standard stereotype or you will be branded traitors instead).
[note: after this post on July 19, 2005, NPR did a great radio show about this campaign, for more click here]
Posted by johnza at January 1, 2005 03:16 PM
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