The DOVE Real Beauty Campaign ad was one of the most conceptual ads of the decade. This ad went viral. Every where you would go online, you would see either the ad, or someone mentioning the ad. The author of this specific ad is DOVE, but it was specifically made by Unliever, who are the owners of DOVE.
It all began in the early 2000s where DOVE executives needed to find a way to bring their product back to life and beat other competitors. Their PR agency conducted a study to learn about the priorities and needs of women. Later the results came and the company could not believe what they saw. Only 2 percent of the women considered themselves beautiful. That being said, they knew they had to do something with that data and relate it to their product. They began to move beyond the bar soap and headed towards body wash and shampoo and attracted more and more women and even men.
A few months after “Tick Box,” Dove launched a billboard campaign that featured groups of “real,” diverse women in their underwear. This image is what rose eyebrows and really caught people’s attention. All the women in the image were women that were curvy and of different ethnic backgrounds all huddled together smiling in white two piece bathing suits. Above the image is the DOVE logo and next to that is “Real Beauty Campaign” stated.
This first began with outdoor billboards images with women with two tick-box options next to them stating “fat or fit”. Then this campaign gradually made its way to the big series with the DOVE real beauty campaign image with women who look more “real” and relatable.
The purpose of this piece was to help other women feel empowered and confident in their own bodies. Many women grew up not loving their body and hair and therefore not loving themselves. The women from the actual image speak upon that topic and tell their followers how this campaign helped them become less insecure and love themselves more. DOVE also happens to be one of the only mainstream advertisers that speaks about how we define female beauty.
DOVE’s target audience was definitely women. Their products in general attract women mostly, and they knew with this campaign, it was going to attract them even more and bring more in. Although this was targeted towards the women, men too were taken back by this ad. Many men agreed and cheered on the campaign, encouraging women to listen to it, while others did sit back and laugh unfortunately. This campaign caught the attention of many celebrities and people in the media as well giving it even more of a show.
The production techniques and persuasive strategy that was used was to activate emotion. This is because it shows many different women of every shape and size sending and believing a happy and positive message to women out there that they are beautiful just the way they are and they need to love their body to be completely happy. It all began with the Tick-Box billboards and then ended with this. The company obviously wanted to send a message out there somehow and figured exactly how to at the end. If the company can relate to the women out there, it most definitely can make a change in many women’s lives which would be seen as positive.
The lifestyles and point of views that are represented in this campaign is that a woman is beautiful no matter what. We need to break the stigma of believing that only women that look a certain type of way are considered beautiful. Also, DOVE did a good job on introducing color as well. They also displayed that any color is beautiful, not just one. This propaganda definitely emphasizes that a real beautiful body is not the skinny bodies that are shown on the media, but bodies that one is born in.
Some people may interpret this as an emphasis on beauty in general. They may think that this campaign just gives another excuse for women to just think and care about being beautiful and that’s it. We need to understand that it is not all about the outside looks, but about our intelligence and ethical sensibility.
What is omitted is related to previously what I mentioned. The campaign was careless to say that even though those women are beautiful on the outside, they are also beautiful on the inside because they have beautiful souls and strong minds. Everyone wants to be seen as “beautiful” and therefore we work so hard for our face and bodies to be socially accepted, but we tend to forget that our inner beauty needs fixing as well.
Many women and female leaders may benefit from this campaign. Any company that follows this message as well. This may be harmful to companies like Victoria Secret who have a certain following and are known to have women tall and skinny to represent them. They may see this company as a threat now because women who shop at Victoria Secret may see that the models do not look like the models from the DOVE campaign and easily get offended.
DOVE’s campaign brought awareness to the fact that every shape and size is beautiful. This is an example of propaganda where I would say was real and did not lie whatsoever. Instead, it enlightened women all the world and began a revolution with loving yourself no matter what.
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RESOURCES:
“Dove Real Beauty - Print Ad.” Learn | Mind Over Media, propaganda.mediaeducationlab.com/rate/dove-real-beauty-print-ad.
Bahadur, Nina. “How Dove Tried To Change The Conversation About Female Beauty.” The Huffington Post, TheHuffingtonPost.com, 7 Dec. 2017, www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/21/dove-real-beauty-campaign-turns-10_n_4575940.html.