Dove Case

In looking today at what the response is and was to Dove's attempt to redefine beauty in its ad campaign, the results seem mostly positive. "Ultimately Dove's brand image grew because people began associating concepts of true beauty with Dove and its products" (Carey). Another commentary noted "Dove's Real Beauty campaign has been successful in getting women talking and sharing across media channels. Which channel triggers the most viral word-of-mouth--social media or offline media or some combination of both?" (Hispanic PR). The discussions of these and many other social media commentators, are critical to the branding process for Dove. Because of its campaign to actively engage customers in order to collectively determine what 'real beauty' was, the feedback is necessary to gauge how the consumers feel about the company/products. While the case points out the conflict of interest that arose in Dove being in the beauty products industry and inherently supporting the vanity of the existing forms of beauty, that contention does not seem to reign as significant in research of the popular opinion online. Instead, most consumers decided that the revolutionary side that Dove took on the topic of beauty was both commendable, and bold.

There were definitely great risks in the marketing campaign that Dove chose, primarily because it was very non-traditional in nature. The conflict the blogs point out (from the case) is the flip side to the positive feedback that the general consumer base received. Dove challenged the idea that in most marketing campaigns the goal is to convince the consumer to buy something by means of using a celebrity/model that makes the product look attractive. In this campaign, there are (colloquially speaking) less attractive women posing for the pictures. The argument that is made by Seth Stevenson is that this promotes a stigma that the Dove products are only for unattractive women, and thus not applicable to all women. He also makes the contention that the final risk was that there could be multiple parody's or mockery of the Dove commercials. While that is the case, Dove decided to not respond with any type of statement when these arise, instead saying that the varying opinions foster proper discussion on women's issues.

The discussion of Dove's campaign though shouldn't be ended without a final result analysis though. "In September 2006, Landor Associated identified Dove as one of 10 brands with the greatest percentage gain in the lath and business alue in the past three years." Dove grew by $1.2 billion, in just those 3 years of the campaign. Not to mention the intangible value of the conversations the campaign promoted, and the international dialogue sparked by the controversial methods employed.