Dove: Campaign for Real Beauty

I typed "beautiful" into google images this morning. You probably won't be surprised to know that after a few pictures of nature, this is the first photo that popped up. 

This is the meaning of beautiful? Really?

Then I typed in "what beauty looks like," and got the same picture, followed by thousands of other similar photos. Photoshopped long legs, smooth skin, and tiny waists.

Then I typed in "what real beauty looks like."

I hit "enter," and ads from Dove's Real Beauty Campaign exploded across my screen. As I scrolled through the images, I became more and more intrigued with this marketing strategy, so I decided to dive into the web to learn a bit more about Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty.

I remember seeing this campaign for the the first time when I was about five years old. The photo above was on the wall in my doctor's office across from the scale. I remember being completely intrigued by the idea that those women could be advertising what beauty could look like. All I had ever seen on posters or in ads were skinny models with long legs. I think that ad really got me thinking about what beauty could be from a young age, and subconsciously, I have always associated Dove with beauty.

I don't really buy their products unless it's what's cheap, but I think I have to say kudos to them for planting that association between their brand and beauty in the mind of a five-year-old.

Here's a quote I pulled from Dove's website:

"The Dove® Campaign for Real Beauty was created to provoke discussion and encourage debate."

Apparently, this campaign was launched in 2004. Dove was looking for a way to revive their brand, so their PR company did an extensive study that reported that only 2 percent of women considered themselves beautiful. At this point Dove was starting to expand their product line beyond soap, so their executives saw the research reports as a great opportunity to start a conversation about beauty.


Dove started featuring women -- "plain folk" -- who's physical appearances didn't match up with what is considered "beautiful" by society and google images alike. The ads encouraged an ongoing conversation between viewers, and targeted women of all ages, ethnicities, and backgrounds through different phases of the campaign. 

In 2006, Dove developed "Evolution," a short film. They use storytelling to depict the process from what a typical model looks like when she shows up, fresh-faced, at a photoshoot, until the time her face gets plastered across a billboard. It has soft music, no words, just limited text, and is only about five minutes long. 

It doesn't even show that it's an ad for Dove until the very end when it flashes the logo across the screen. I first saw this particular ad on Facebook when I was 14 and just getting into the fashion industry, but according to The Huffington Post, this ad had gone viral way before viral was a thing.


That same year, Dove established a fund to help educate/inspire girls about "a wider definition of beauty,"  and their Super Bowl ad called "Little Girls" reached almost 90 million people. That ad, much like "Evolution," was very clean-cut and minimalistic, but was only a minute long. I feel like this ad played up hidden fear even more than the other ads because it involved children. 

I'm usually not a big fan of this tequnique, but the fact that the ad wasn't saying "I'm going to scare you into buying my product," but rather, "I'm going to scare you into making a difference, " made it that much more effective.


A year later Dove launched it's third phase of the campaign with world-famous photographer, Annie Leibovitz.


"The campaign celebrated the essence of women 50+—wrinkles, age spots, grey hair and all."


Dove had already reached out to mothers, teens, and little girls, and finally they had reached the older women of society. Women of all ages had been targeted, and though they might have had a hard time selling soap to the people of of the upperclass, this campaign of natural beauty was something that could be heard by anyone -- including men.


Since then, Dove has worked with organizations such as Girl Scouts, creating ways to encourage girls around the world. Their goal is to have reached over 15 million  girls by the end of this year.

The campaign is now officially running under the name "Choose Beautiful," but is still widely refereed to under its previous name. 

Not only has the campaign won numerous awards, but it has also almost doubled sales since it first launched in 2004. Beyond that, research from Harvard psychologist, Nancy Etcoff, has reported that women today are much more open-minded about beauty. 

Although this is definitely a case of cause marketing, so named by Forbes magazine, the Association Principle has been the most effective asset to the campaign. Now when people see Dove's logo, many are going to have "natural beauty" or "positivity" pop into their brains -- that's a lot more effective than just a white bar of soap.

The Campaign for Real Beauty was made into posters, billboards, TV ads, videos, and social media ads. I think Dove has done a really good job engaging their consumers and asking them what their branding means to them. I think Jeff Jarvis would approve of that. I read that their PR team is working on making some hashtags to go along with the campaign, and that they are going to work on giving positive feedback to women making self-criticizing comments about their appearances on social media. I think building up that element of their media is going to be the boost they need to keep the campaign going.

I was glad to read that social media is something Dove is really trying to work on, because their accounts are pretty sparse. Other than the videos and billboard ads, I never see anything about Dove on social media. I feel like once hey get that pulled together it's really going to influence their brand for the better. They have a good start but could improve in this area. 

Aerie, advertising with unretouched, "real" models

This ad campaign is pretty original. I recently saw the brand, Always, do something similar with their #likeagirl campaign, and Aerie has been advertising with unretouched images with their #AerieREAL campaign,  but other than that I haven't seen anything like Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty. I think it was a hard concept to go about tackling because this campaign isn't just about selling products, its about conveying ideas. 

They might convince me to feel better about my body, but they still have to convince me to buy their soap.

Not everyone is impressed with the ad campaign. There's still the point to be considered that Dove's ads are only enforcing the standards for women to be visually beautiful in society. I remember my mom writing an angry letter to Dove after picking up a copy of The Reader's Digest, with a Dove ad on the back cover, from off of my 12-year-old brother's bedroom floor.  She wanted to know why they felt the need to show mostly-naked women to sell soap. Feminists around the world have written whole Thesis Projects bashing the campaign.

"Drawing on feminist-disability theory, I argue that the campaign represented an ideology of naïve integration. While the acceptance of diverse physical bodies was espoused by the campaign, the textual and visual discourse simultaneously reflected many traditional beauty standards and practices. "-Dr. Sarah N. Heiss,  professor at The School of Communication Studies, Ohio University

Others have been quick to point out that Dove's "daddy company," Unilever, is also the father of ultra-sexist Axe, among other brands. Sure that's pretty questionable, but all I really have to say to that is do you really think Dove has much say in how its sister-brands spend their Friday nights? 

In response to one of their more recent ads, Erin Keane wrote an article for Salon.com called, "Stop posting that Dove ad: “Real beauty” campaign is not feminist." In the article one of the biggest complaints was that the ad depicts women's worst critics as themselves. 

"Except we’re not — at least, not naturally," Keane writes. "All of that body image baggage is internalized by growing up in a society that enforces rigid beauty standards, and since the target demographic for this ad is clearly women over 35 with access to library cards (which is to say, women who have had some time to figure this reality out), it is baffling that Dove can continue to garner raves for its pandering, soft-focus fake empowerment ads."

Businessinsider.com has an article byLaura Stampler called "Why People Hate Dove's 'Real Beauty' Ad," that surfaces the same kinds of arguments.  The articles suggest that women's self-consciousness is all society's fault. I have a pretty big issue with that statement because, hello, we are society. How can you change society if you don't change individuals? There are many women out there like the one in the Facebook post below. My problem with what she has to say is the lack of qualifying language she is using. The ad wasn't saying all woman hate themselves for stupid reasons that don't exist. The ad was saying that some women need to be less critical of themselves. 


As far as my opinion goes, that of the average-Joe consumer, I think the campaign is great. After spending time in the fashion industry it's easy to pick up unhealthy standards of beauty. The models get so much attention, so much praise for being so tall, so thin, so "beautiful," that I have found myself really struggling with my own self-image. It's really encouraging to see what Dove has come up with. 


The campaign is memorable because it's relatable. Because they are conveying more than just a product, the ideas they are expressing are something that can be brought into casual conversation among consumers. That's why their ads such as "Evolution" have gone so viral. Here I am ten years later still seeing that ad pop up in my news feeds. That conversational element of the campaign has been such a boost to their brand. 

When I see the Dove campaign ads I couldn't care less that they are about soap. I care about the messages that they present and I know that I'm not the only one who feels motivated by them. It's just another rare reminder that someone can see and say "wow, maybe I am beautiful." I think that if more companies made a point to bring broader beauty standards into the way they market their brands, it could really make a difference in the way we see ourselves. It would be harder to forget the messages if we were surrounded by them.

I do realize that expanding the issue is impossible for the success of the beauty industry. If everyone did really think they were beautiful, they wouldn't buy products like cellulite cream anymore... and that would really put a damper on some companies' pocketbooks.

The executives at Dove made a genius decision when they launched this campaign. Sure, the feminists have their begrudging opinions about it, and it has been running for a long time. It wouldn't hurt to try to update the campaign, but Dove is working on that. I do think that they need to continue to stretch beauty standards in advertising. 

Bringing people with disabilities into the campaign, and maybe even steering into more intellectual standpoints of beauty beyond physical attractiveness. Maybe what Dove needs is to put this campaign to bed, using it as the foundation for a new campaign that tells a broad story. 

Based on this campaign, I am much more likely do buy Dove's products. I might not tell all my friends to go buy Dove soap directly, but I would totally share Dove's ads with them because I fully support the messages they express in this campaign.
Good or bad, Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty will be in the advertising textbooks for decades to come. 

After doing this assignment I learned a lot about what makes a good ad. So far I have concluded that the Association Principle is one of the key elements to success in advertising. 

I was really surprised to see that their ads really didn't cost loads of money to make. They were just well done with good messages and that's why they went viral. 

Listening to Jeff Jarvis' advice and letting your consumers join the conversation is extremely important too! Tell a story that your consumers can relate to, and make them feel important. Because at the end of the day they are the ones buying your product, and that's how you get paid. That makes them pretty darn important doesn't it?