Dove Unleashes "Onslaught": Social Responsibility or Corporate Hypocrisy?

The really sad part is Dove is also owned by the same company that manufactures the "Axe" body spray line. And, naturally, those ads are completely harmless.

Obviously Dove (Unilever) are in the beauty business to make money, so they aren't going to do anything that doesn't have a payoff. Feelgood campaigns are always a good bet and especially ones that go viral and generate positive feelings. So long as the Dove brand doesn't water the message down by promoting the beauty myth elsewhere in its ads or actions then they're golden. It's not a bad direction for the company to take and, because they're pretty well all about soap, they really can't be accused of trying to do anything but make people clean as opposed to "beautiful".

As an aside, would this ad campaign be taken as seriously or given as much demographically drilled airplay (the evolution ad is still shown during MTV shows like the Hills and other teen dramas) if it _weren't_ branded by an HABA (Health And Beauty Aids) company? I don't think so. It is more effective BECAUSE it's not by a counterculture hippy group.

Good for Unilever/Dove.

Marketing is marketing is marketing. Dove's need to appeal to the indignance that comes part and parcel with the modern beauty myth is born of the same marketing genius as the Axe need to appeal to men who really need to think that a body spray is going to have a flotilla of hookers chase them down the street, demanding sexual favours.

I tend to err on the kind side, however; if this ad convinces one parent to talk to their child about unrealistic body image, it served at least some social purpose.

Say what you will about AXE's marketing... the stuff serves a purpose! Now that smoking is forbidden inside dance clubs, shower-in-a-can is an almost essential solution to the reek of sweat and alcohol that pervades the dancefloor now that our nostrils aren't clogged with tobacco smoke.

An aside: Unilever also produces a product in India called 'Fair & Lovely' (a skin whitener). It's a huge seller!

http://www.unilever.com.my/ourbrands/personalcare/fairandlovely.asp

Re: Fair & Lovely - that's sickening.

Does Unilever also produce a "eyelid surgery in a box!" product in South East Asia too?

Laura is right. Fairness products unfortunately are a big sell in India and unilever's stuff is probably the best seller and the most advertised one.

And it sickens me because this is a country where you have people with such gorgeous range of skin tones all the way from light to the dark... but the ad world just fails to see that...

@Hamish: It's effective because of the scale. They have this ad all over the media.. Only if a hippie group can come up the dough to pay O&M to produce such an ad..

http://adbusters.org/spoofads/fashion/reality/

In regards to the Fair + Lovely, I think it's more of a chicken and egg story. In India, the prejudice that fair=lovely came long before Unilever ever existed... and is perpetuated througout to this day with Unilever only playing a very small supporting role in this travesty. It's interesting to examine whether it is the beauty industry that perpetuates these 'norms' or ourselves and the industry just feeds on it.

To follow-up SH's comment, I am surprised there isn't a product like that in Mexico, the mentality is paralel to that of India. You just have to see the difference between soap opera stars and the majority of Mexican people. Maybe the product exists as well but I don't know of it (since I've been in Canada for so long).

Slimfast is also a product of Unilever.
I guess they didn't have the guts to put that into the Dove ad. so my vote is hypocrisy.

I really like Simian, but I'm on the fence about all of the commercials they're ending up in.

Whenever anyone mentions Dove's 'campaign' for real beauty, I tell them to type in 'Fair & Lovely' into Youtube's search engine. Unilever (Dove's parent company), markets the skin lightening creams in India and the Middle East, with such lovely heavyhanded ads as the 'girl who only gets the dream job/bigwig exec/fame & fourtune after using F&L' and 'famous male action star who uses F&L'. Stinks of hypocrisy.