Dove Soap and The Unilever Group: Real Beauty?

[Ms.Tarantula]

Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty was launched in 2004 to "change the status quo [of female beauty] and offer in its place a broader, healthier, more democratic view of beauty," according to the campaign's mission statement.

"For too long," the Web site reported, "beauty has been defined by narrow, stifling stereotypes."

Dove has undertaken a number of initiatives to reach its goal. For example, Dove pledged to make "advertising that inspires women and society to think differently about what is defined as beautiful."

Critics responded to the campaign, saying that Dove is acting hypocritical in selling women "real" beauty while advertising beauty products. But Knowmore.org has uncovered an even deeper hypocrisy.

Dove's parent company, The Unilever Group, has been playing both sides of the fence. Unilever not only owns and operates Slim-Fast-a line of diet foods that arguably rely on body image dissatisfaction for sales-but also bears responsibility for Axe Body Spray and its popular ad campaign.

The Axe campaign is notorious for using women as hyper-sexualized punch-lines, portraying them in ads as disposable toys, irresistibly drawn to worship any man smart enough to wear body spray. The campaign's Web site features a cartoonish image of a female body builder which it refers to as a "questionable hook up" and offers tips on how to solve such "problems."

So how real is Dove and Unilever's commitment to "advertising that inspires women and society"?

[liquidblue]

This is exactly the reason why big companies dont do "the right thing". As soon as they make a few changes they are called hipocrites for having other facets of the company operating in the traditional way.

Im not saying Dove isnt just running the campaign to make cash... But fuck, why are people bitching about a company that is trying to support a good thing? You cant expect a multi-billion dollar parent company like uni-lever to do an instant 180 just because one of its worker companies has decided to.

[t-skywalker]

politics, go figure. i thought it was a good idea.

[prozac]

welcome to marketing.

they made those ads to sell product. that's what ads are for. you can't really expect them to be genuine or consistent. it's all about making money by preying on people's emotions and insecurities.

they are just hitting a target demographic...marketing 101

and i still like their campaign better than most. i think it is a real campaign with a fantastic message

[Ms.Tarantula]

hey guys, I wasn't stating an opinion, I just thought it was interesting. for the most part I think their campaign is awesome. I was suprised to learn about the slim fast thing tho.

[Carrie]

I am currently using dove shampoo and conditioner.

[ebbomega]

YouTube - Bill Hicks on Marketing

[.LxT]

Corporations generally play on all sides of the fence. The larger the demographic, the happier the shareholders.

But is it *that* bad? Sure, it's hypocrisy in a sense - but is it making anybody feel bad? The way I see it, the "Real Beauty" campaign is helping women that would otherwise feel bad because of the slim-fast campaigns. Granted, it's us that allowed these anorexic standards of beauty to come into society in the first place so we've partly created the market.

As far as damage control goes, this is a step forward. Big companies, as said, don't do 180s. But if more people support this campaign as opposed to slim-fast, it does force their hand to move forward on this. It's unfeasible to think you can change them - but you can gear their focus in a more socially-responsible direction.

Caveat: of course, "socially-responsible" is a dangerous, subjective idea