Dove’s campaign for real beauty: effective?

Dove is a fast-moving consumer personal care brand owned by an international conglomerate Unilever. The first product for Dove was a formulated bar soap in 1940.

Through out the years, the brand had been challenged in the market thereby creating various marketing campaigns and more product range: antiperspirants/ deodorants, hair care, body wash, bar soap, and lotions.

Dove is formulated to be pH neutral, with a pH that is usually between 6. 5 and 7. 5, which made its brand recognized as a mild soap as it did not irritate skin.

By 2004, there is a need to a new campaign to address communication barrier to customers due to the aggressive marketing by its leading competitors: Olay (Proctor and Gamble), Nivea (Beiersdorf AG), and Neutrogena (Johnson & Johnson).

So by this year, Dove has commissioned and decided to conduct a market survey spanning all continents having female respondents of certain ages to participate.

Dove has attracted worldwide attention when they globally launched an insightful marketing campaign – which started in UK, then on the summer (2005) that followed was launched in United States and Canada — that addressed the dual target for an established brand: keep existing customers and attract new ones against competition.

Dove initially consulted their Public Relations company, Edelman, which resulted to developing a global study developed by StrategyOne, the applied research arm of Edelman. And based from the findings and recommendations of the research paper was put to life strategically and creatively by Dove’s advertising agency of record, Ogilvy & Mather.

The campaign Campaign For Real Beauty purports to be ” an agent of change to educate and inspire girls on a wider definition of beauty and to make them feel more confident about themselves*”.

The  quantitative telephone study was conducted among 3, 300 girls and women aged 15-64 in 10

countries: United States, Canada, Great Britain, Italy, France, Portugal, Netherlands, Brazil, Argentina, and Japan.  And the following figures were released by the conducted study in 2004 and 2006 (revised study).

– 1, 000 interviews were conducted among girls 15-17.

– 2, 300 interviews were conducted among women 18-64.

·         2% of the respondents things they are beautiful.

·         9% of them thinks of then as attractive

·         31% says they are natural looking

·         29% says they’re average looking

·         another 29% is undecided on how they look physically

·         54% of the respondents said they first became aware of the need to be physically attractive by 6 to 17 years of age.

Fueled by the results of the study, Dove launched the Campaign for Real Beauty that challenged currently held beliefs and portrayals (specifically those impressed by media) of what real beauty is by showcasing real women viewed as unconventional beauties in their advertising and outreach by branding the message that being who they are is perfect and beautiful.

“ We want to challenge the definition of beauty. We believe that beauty has become too narrow in definition. We want to defy the stereotype that only the young, blond, and tall are the beautiful.” — Philippe Harousseau, Dove’s Marketing

The marketing strategies and ideas conceptualized for the said campaign were launched through all various channels that included billboards, radio and TV broadcast, newspapers and magazines, several below-the-line materials, and the Internet.

Rather than unrealistic images of beauty rivals such as J&J and Nivea, Dove’s advertising offers a more democratized view of beauty to which we can all aspire by using real women of different shapes and sizes, ages, ethnicity and physical attributes – no major touch ups or digitally enhanced photographs.

Since the inception of the CFRB campaign, the brand has succeeded its objectives. Dove’s brand name has re-enforced its equity in the global market not just for personal care but also as an advocacy by helping women and their well-being.

This paper wishes to provide a framework of empirical evaluation as to how the campaign made a personal and social impact to women of all ages in UK and how it serves as a beacon of truth as to how beauty should be perceived.

*          Campaign For Real Beauty (2010). Campaign For Real Beauty.  .