Is Dove For Real?

Dove has a campaign called "Campaign For Real Beauty" and it's supposed to help the self-esteem of millions of teenage girls to free them from the restraints of the beauty industry. To let them know: You have real beauty.

That's right. You have real beauty before you buy your $20 shampoo. Before you put on that eye liner, and lipstick, and blush, and foundation, and eye shadow, and lip liner, and anti-shine cream.

You have real beauty and Dove (owned by Unilever) thinks it's about time you knew it.... Of course, the problem some industry experts see here is that Dove (eh, owned by Unilever) is the mass marketer and producer of most of these industry products.

Nonetheless, the campaign has been a searing success so far. Dove has released two very well-done, and sometimes criticized, commercials for their campaign. To really get the feel, you got to take a look....
Dove "Evolution" commercial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U&NR=1
Dove "Onslaught" commercial http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaH4y6ZjSfE

Those are some pretty heavy commercials. Pow! Right in your face, especially "Onslaught," it's like hey everybody out there is talking to your kids about looking good and we're going to sell the crap out of her if you don't take a stance.

So, there's the tyranny of the situation. The Yin and Yang aren't really panning out on this one. I mean should we mind that Unilever also produces the Axe commercials? I guess we should distinguish between the product branding of both Dove and Axe.

But, here's what we're learning in advertising school about using information systems to get your products point across:

A) It works - more people are increasing the amount of time they spend watching online videos - that includes product commercials. After watching "Onslaught" I actually took myself to ITunes and did one more consumer step: I bought Simian's La Breeze (which just so happens to be the commercials music soundtrack.)
B) It can reach lots of people - As of March 2, 2008, when I just checked www.youtube.com, The "Onslaught" video had rung up 1.3 million views. That's not bad for free press. As for "Evolution," 6,232,000 views and counting! That's just unfair. Spell it: F. R. E. E. advertising
C) You're going to open yourself up to criticism. I also noticed plenty of professional and not-so professional knock off videos which were actually worth seeing as well.

Either way, you decide on this one - let me know. My thoughts are that you can't fault a company for trying to get involved in something "bigger." Whether that's the Internet or the cause they are supporting. Everybody is trying to make something bigger. Using information systems like the Internet, companies, campaigns, television shows are all becoming bigger than real life.