Dove Real Beauty Campaign

Changing stereotypes and people's view seems like an insurmountable task. Yet, some manage the impossible by changing the status quo and influencing our society. One of these changes was made by the company Dove, which decided to impact people's self-esteem and how society perceives beauty.

It's no secret that people, particularly women, are highly critical of their perceptive beauty, as they compare it to the unrealistic standards of supermodels in the beauty industry. Dove acted to change that view and convince people that beauty doesn't come from one standard but in many forms and shapes. The company designed a long-term marketing strategy to change beauty stereotypes through its Dove Real Beauty Campaign. In this explanation, we will look closely at the origin of this marketing campaign, analyze some of its successes and failures, and finally see the results they have achieved today.

Dove Real Beauty Campaign Objectives

To put this marketing campaign into perspective, let's first talk about the origin of Dove. Dove was a soap bar company established in 1957 in the US. From the beginning, Dove was different from its competitor as it sold soaps that cleaned but also cleansed the skin.¹

Their competitive advantage was that their soap was much better for the skin as it made it softer and smoother while cleaning it, in contrast to their competitors' soap which attacked the skin to clean it. As a result, their product's popularity grew, and Dove already established the foundation of a company that thinks differently and cares for its customers.

The shift for Dove started in 2004 when they published a study they ordered from StrategyOne, a research firm based in New York: "The real truth about beauty: a global report."² With this study, Dove wanted to explore what beauty means to women and its reasoning. The study was conducted through a phone survey and interviewed 3,200 women aged 18 to 64 across ten countries. Following this study, Dove found that:

• Only 2% of women call themselves "beautiful."

• 72% find their beauty "average."

• 68% strongly agreed that "the media and advertising set an unrealistic standard of beauty that most women can't ever achieve."

• 75% wished that "the media did a better job portraying women of diverse physical attractiveness – shape, and size."

Those were dreadful statistics, and this survey caused a dramatic shift in Dove's mission and marketing strategy. Dove wanted to change this status quo and create a beauty campaign to empower women's self-esteem by helping them feel more beautiful and changing the narrow view of what is considered beautiful by our society. So, in 2004, Dove launched its campaign for real beauty and founded the self-esteem project.

Fig. 1 - Clean and smooth skin

Dove Real Beauty Campaign Analysis

Dove's real beauty campaign is neither short-term nor a one-time shot strategy. Instead, as it takes a lot of time and effort to change people's views, Dove adopted a long-term plan and implemented many marketing campaigns to create a narrative and build its brand over the years. As such, the credit for Dove's marketing campaign cannot be given to one person or only one institution but is the result of years of work from several marketers, researchers, and universities.

Dove Real Beauty Campaign: Real Women. Real Beauty

Dove's real beauty marketing campaign is an ongoing journey that started in 2004. At that time, beauty ads only showcased supermodels and modified pictures to glorify only one type of beauty. In partnership with the ad agency Ogilvy, Dove launched its first campaign by showing photographs of people on billboards who were not supermodels from beauty ads but regular people of all ages, shapes, and sizes.⁴ These billboards were accompanied by a statement giving two choices to the people and inviting them to join the beauty debate :

• "44 and hot? Or 44 and not? Can women be hotter at 44 than 20?"

• "Flat or Flattering? Can you be sexy without being busty?"

• "Fat or Fit? Does true beauty only squeeze into size 8?"

Under this beauty campaign, Dove also published a photograph of several smiling and laughing real women in white underwear. Those photographs appeared everywhere in women's magazines and on TV next to regular beauty ads, contrasting even more with their unrealistic beauty standards. Then, they became viral, and people talked about it on the radio and talk shows, fueling the debate and the narrative set by Dove.

Fig. 2 - Beauty comes in different ages, shapes, and sizes

Dove Real Beauty Campaign: Evolution

In 2006 Dove launched the Evolution ad. This short video shows all the processes and evolution necessary to create a beauty campaign image. The clip starts with a woman taking a seat; we then see how make-up artists and hairdressers transform her to prepare for a photoshoot.

After the picture is taken, it is time for designers to modify the photograph by narrowing the nose, getting bigger eyes, erasing hairs, etc. Ultimately, the final picture is so different from reality that it does not even look like the model herself. At the end of the video, you can see this statement: "No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted."⁵

Dove Real Beauty Campaign: Beauty Sketches

In 2013 Dove launched the real beauty sketches campaign. The video starts with a woman sitting on a couch; next to her is an FBI artist specializing in sketching people's faces. They couldn't see each other, and the woman had to describe how she looked to the artist, and the artist would draw her face based on her description.

Once the artist finished the sketch, the model would go, and another person would come in. That newcomer would describe to the artist the first model that has just left, and the artist would have to do a new sketch of the first model based on the new description. Once the artist finished the drawings, they were placed next to each other. The result was that the first sketches were harsher and didn't represent a good image of reality.

Dove Real Beauty Campaign Results

Although some mistakes were made along the way, there is no denying Dove's impressive results:

• Word of mouth: as Dove broke beauty taboos, people discussed its campaigns everywhere. They were picked up by talk shows and radio, which gave Dove free marketing coverage valued at 150 million USD and increased its brand awareness.⁴

• People's view: Dove helped people identify themselves by promoting the beauty of regular people or showing how beauty ads distort reality. Through those ads, Dove improved people's self-esteem.

• Brand recognition: Dove built a brand that is valued at 5.1 billion USD.⁸