Dove Evolution

The problem

By 2004, the beauty product industry was becoming an extremely saturated market. Although the brand awareness of Dove remained strong, their products were becoming seemingly indistinct from those of their competitors.

The creative strategy

Dove needed a new advertising campaign that would differentiate the brand and their message from those of their competitors. The advertisements of most beauty care products during this time focused on the attributes of the product or the benefits you can derive from it. Their messages were that: ‘this eye cream can make you look younger, this lotion makes your skin softer’, etc. Below is an example of a typical advertisement for body lotion.

While most beauty care advertisements revolved around the product, Dove wanted to take a new approach to beauty, one in which the individual consumer was the focal point of which their products revolved around.

Market research

The backbone of every good advertising campaign starts with researching the market and knowing the needs of your consumers. Based off the assumption that women have a narrow definition of beauty, Dove commissioned a study to determine just that. To do this, Dove enlisted the help of the research firm StrategyOne to answer the question “What does beauty mean to women today?” Realizing that beauty is a subjective evaluation judged differently in many cultures, the question was asked to 3,500 women, between the ages of 18 to 64, in 10 countries throughout the world. The results were surprising consistent across age and culture. Among the key insights that the company derived from the research, and that layed the foundation for the creation of their new campaign, were:

• Only 2% of these women describe themselves as “beautiful”
• 91% feel the media and advertising need to do a better job of representing realistic images of women
• 60% agreed with the statement “Society expects women to enhance their physical attractiveness”

The results of the study were clear to conclude that portrayals of female beauty in popular culture were helping to perpetuate an idea of beauty that was neither authentic nor attainable to their female consumers.

The campaign for Real Beauty

Finally in 2006, Dove decided that it would re-brand itself as the beauty company that celebrates real beauty. Dove’s new positioning strategy appealed to the aesthetic needs of their consumers, which allowed the company to drastically differentiate themselves from their competitors. Instead of focusing on the functional values of the product, Dove focused on the need for consumers to feel good about themselves while using the product.

The relative homogeneous results of the research allowed the company to develop a single, universal message that it could communicate to woman of all ages and races. The message that they wanted to communicate to their target audience was: real beauty can only be found on the inside and every woman deserves to feel beautiful.

To remain consistent with the message of the campaign, Dove wanted to create an image that their target audience could identify with. The image that the wanted to project in their advertisements was that real beauty is portrayed by women who do not have “runway model” on their resumes — they are the women passing by in grocery aisles or sitting in the office next door. Therefore, the campaign sought to portray women of all ages and sizes.

However, Dove realized in order to strategically reposition their brand in the minds of the consumer and create brand loyalty, their message must be genuine. Therefore, the campaign for Real Beauty was built more around the concept of building self-esteem in women then it was selling a product to them. Rather than using the viral video as a promotion for their products, they used it to generate associations and a relationship with the brand (i.e Brand building). Therefore when they developed the viral advertisement for the campaign, they wanted to send a clear message about real beauty, and integrate that message into the Dove brand. After months of planning, the first viral video for the campaign was released.

Global success

Many times, advertisers think the “recipe for success” in a viral advertisement draws upon shock, humor, or special effects. But the Dove viral video is neither “laugh out loud” funny or edgy. It does, however, address an issue of importance to many women — the concept of beauty projected by the cosmetics industry, and its effect on their self-esteem.

Just as Dove hoped to achieve, the image of the woman in the advertisement is not the prototype of your average “super model.” But society’s perception of beauty, in all parts of the world, has become so altered because of this unrealistic portrayal of what beauty actually is.

The short film has no words, only emotions. It is a single, clear message that their target audiences worldwide can strongly associate with.

Conclusion

Since it’s release on YouTube, the video did not take long to reach a massive amount of exposure. Today, the video is still considered one of the top 5 viral advertisements ever produced and is actually the only viral to be so successful online that it was turned into a television commercial only after first appearing on the web. Dove’s ability to think globally (by conducting cross cultural studies in order to get a holistic view for the campaign) and act globally (creating a single, universal message that incorporated the brand into the feeling of self esteem) were the factors that led up to the viral videos success.