DOVE: Real Beauty Campaign

by Maggie, Patsy, and Ben

First Step: Research

2004: Dove sponsors a global research campaign into beauty perception.
Conducted by Harvard and the London School of Economics.
The study consisted of a 3,200-respondent telephone survey,
conducted among women aged 18-64 in 10 countries. Each interview
lasted 20-25 minutes (depending on translation length) and
respondents were interviewed by native speakers in their own
language.
Findings-only 2% of women consider themselves beautiful.

Second Step: Planning

8 Basic Principles
Situation
What is it?
Objective
Informational objective
Motivational?
Overall objective
Audience
Who are we trying to reach out to?
Strategy
How will campaign achieve objectives?

Planning Continued...

Tactics
Social Media
Advertisements/ Billboards
TV commercials
Calendar
On-going since it began in 2004
Budget
For Evolution video $135K
$2.5M for ad during Super Bowl
Measurement
Were objectives met?

Third Step: Communication

Goals of Communication:
Message exposure
Accurate dissemination of the message
Acceptance of the message
Attitude change
Change in overt behavior
Accept the message that beauty is being strong, brave, and happy with being you
Attitude change to have women view themselves as beautiful

Persuasion

Uses of Persuasion
To change or neutralize hostile opinions
To crystallize latent opinions and positive attitudes
To maintain favorable opinions
Persuasion through videos using real women
Strong emotional impact
Women have the need to feel desired and loved

Themes of the Campaign

Narratives
Share your #BeautyStory
Relationships
Mother-daughter
Social media and video
Hashtags as a call to action

Tick Box (2004)

First Step of the Campaign

Billboard
Text your vote
Percentages appeared next to the image on the billboard
1.5 million visitors
This was a topic women wanted to talk about

Evolution (2006)

Moving beyond rebranding for brand authenticity

Eye opening to narrow definitions of beauty
Video (:20-1:06)

Real Beauty Sketches (2013)

Most-watched video ad of all time.

Message: You are more beautiful than you think
Forensic artist drew 2 pictures
Start at the side by side comparison
Video (1:25-2:25)

Choose Beautiful: Women all over the world make a choice (2015)

Diversity
Different Languages
Beautiful vs. Average
Social media
No geographical limits
Beauty relates to women everywhere
#ChooseBeautiful

Dove+Twitter: #SpeakBeautiful (2015)

Social Media
Twitter
8 out of 10 women are impacted by negativity on social media
Together we can change the way we talk about beauty on social media
Video (30 sec)

CORPORATE PR

Marketing Communications
Product Publicity
Viral Marketing
Corporate Philanthropy
Partnerships with
Girls inc.
Boys & Girls Club of America
Girl Scouts

Criticism

Tick Box Ad
opens opportunity to criticise woman
further narrows the ideal of beauty
Enhances the standard ideal of beauty
limited diversity
physical disabilities

Criticism (example)

Sending the message that physical beauty is all that matters

Fourth Step: Measurement

The campaign has been primarily positively received
The TV spot evolution has an estimated 150 million in earned media
value.
Due to the large exposure in womens magazines and talk shows,
overall media coverage was worth 30x paid media coverage.
Many other companies have followed suit with female empowerment
ads
2004: 2.5 billion sales 2014: 4 billion sales

Fourth step: Measurement

Parent company: Unilever
Axe massively sexualized ads
Fair and Lovely skin lightening cream marketed to darker
skinned women in other countries
Dissonance with Dove.

Questions?

Sources
http://www.dove.us/docs/pdf/19_08_10_The_Truth_About_Beauty-White_Paper_2.pdf
http://www.energizegrowth.com/2015/08/real-beauty-measuring-the-dove-marketing-campaigns-success/
http://www.visiblemeasures.com/2014/07/09/how-doves-campaign-for-real-beauty-ushered-in-new-age-of-female-empowerment/
http://www.newsgeneration.com/2014/04/11/pr-case-study-dove-real-beauty/
http://www.dove.us/Social-Mission/campaign-for-real-beauty.aspx
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/21/dove-real-beauty-campaign-turns-10_n_4575940.html
http://www.canada.com/national/nationalpost/story.html?id=e2e95710-bd0a-46c5-8208-725975e9ec88
http://www.prca.ie/download/consumermore20k.pdf
http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=444be949-0d65-4501-8395-bf5bfed8a241%40sessionmgr4002&vid=5&hid=4114
http://web.a.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=444be949-0d65-4501-8395-bf5bfed8a241%40sessionmgr4002&vid=13&hid=4114
http://www.dove.us/Social-Mission/campaign-for-real-beauty.aspx
-http://realbeautysketches.dove.us/