Dove: “Real Beauty” Campaign
Sex appeals, objectification and inappropriate sexuallization are still taking place in the marketing and advertising world as strategies which can influence and attract consumers, despite the fact that it has brought a great deal of unethical advertisements and peoples’ objections. Hopefully, brands globally in order to express and show potential consumers their point of view about the matter, have launched different types of campaigns so as to take a stand against inequalities and stereotypes while promoting their products and services.
Dove is one of those brands, which particularly started the “Real Beauty” campaign back in 2004 aiming to encourage women to cherish their natural beauty, as well as inspire them to feel more confident. Through this campaign, Dove’s goal was to increase brand loyalty, as well as to establish a strong connection between the brand itself and both the consumers and their feelings. The “Real Beauty” campaign is a series of actions such as TV advertisements, workshops or sleepover events. In the case of “The Real Beauty Sketches” action, the channels of distribution were: several press releases (4 billion PR and blogger media impressions), social media, YouTube, TVC and billboards. The video which was launched back in 2013 went viral, because of the highly shareable content, and made a great impact on people’s perspectives and the Media, as more than 50 million people viewed the video within 12 days.
The video titled “Dove Real Beauty Sketches”, showcases women of all shapes and colors, which is the target group as well, while the brand’s purpose was to redefine traditional perceptions of beauty and encourage women to see the real one, taking into account that it is probably annoying for women to be bombarded with images of glamorous and skinny models.
The advertisement follows a forensic artist, who draws crime suspects based on witnesses’ descriptions. In this case, he draws facial portraits of several women based solely on what they tell him as he cannot see them. Then he draws another portrait of the same women based on what people who have only interacted with them for a short while describe. In almost every case, there’s a stark difference between the two images of each woman. The self-described portraits are uglier and sadder. Women could easily notice the differences by looking at the portraits standing next to each other, proving that you tend to be too hard on yourself and underlying that you are more beautiful than you actually think.
All in all, the main reason this campaign can be described as a successful and purposeful one is that Dove took a simple thought of every women out there and created an advertisement with a deeper meaning. Women can finally realize that they are more beautiful than they think and eventually be moved by the result. Sex appeals used in advertisements give women unrealistic notions of what they should look like, while feeding into their insecurities.
“What has stayed with me are the emotional reactions the women had when they viewed the composite sketches hung side by side. I think many of these brave women realized that they had a distorted self-perception that had affected parts of their lives in significant ways” Gil Zamora FBI forensic artist
The Ogilvies: Danai Lyratzi, Xenia Ntavranoglou, Stavroula Pollatou, Ioanna Thanasi, Katerina Tsigarida
