Dove do it again
Another thought provoking video from Unilever to promote their Dove brand.
http://creativity-online.com/work/view?seed=6ba794bc
This one uses the classic advertising approach of playing to our insecurities, but there is a twist. The video opens with a young girl’s face and then proceeds to bombard the viewer with advertising images designed to show how the beauty industry’s activities are designed to make women feel bad about themselves. The final line is ‘talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.’
And this comes from one of the biggest players in the market, who must have funded hundreds of millions if not billions of pounds worth of the advertising that they are now explicitly criticising.
What are we to make of it all? Well here are a couple of facts. I don’t have the figures to hand for Unilever, but I do know that L’Oreal - a similar sized company - spend about a third of their turnover on direct advertising. I doubt the position is very different at L’Oreal. Whatever the precise numbers there is no doubt that a considerable chunk of the money you spend on beauty products is itself spent on flogging you more of the same. I think that the Dove campaign is simply an attempt to draw attention to the brand by giving it a different character.
I imagine that it will be quite successful. It has certainly been implemented with style and panache. It has also been funded extremely well.
Should you buy Dove products? If you want to. I know their range fairly well and I think most of the products are quite good and are priced pretty well. Will you be making a contribution to improving the self esteem of young girls? I doubt it very much.