The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty

The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty
Case Study by Olivia Falcione and Laura Henderson

SITUATION ANALYSIS:
The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty was started after Dove conducted a global study on beauty. The study called, The Real Truth About Beauty: A World Report confirmed a hypothesis that the definition for beauty had narrowed and impossible to attain. Dove found that:
§ Just 12 % of women are very satisfied with their physical attractiveness
§ Only 2 % of women describe themselves as beautiful
§ 68 % strongly agree that the media sets an unrealistic standard of beauty
§ 75 % wish the media did a better job in portraying the diversity of women's physical attractiveness, including size and shape, across all ages

When the economy has a downturn women stop shopping, but for higher end items such as shoes and purses, not beauty items. Marketing in the beauty industry is mainly geared toward women for good reason. Women compose over 50 percent of the United States population and they influence or buy 80 percent of products sold. These are influential numbers for any company.

Dove is the number one cleansing brand and is growing at more than 25 percent yearly. They are doing a sixth-month rollout of their hair care line. Unilever prides itself on advertising, announcing in 2002 a multi-million dollar advertising alliance with AOL Time Warner. Unilever expanded a co-marketing deal with Bally’s Total Fitness that makes Dove the exclusive sponsor and provider of personal hygiene products at almost 400 Bally’s fitness centers across the U.S and Canada. It is a crowded market and Dove wanted to separate themselves from the other companies and brands to generate higher sales.
Unilevers’ competitors include Proctor and Gamble, Estee Lauder, L’Oreal, Avon and others. All of these companies are experiencing growth and healthy sales. Proctor and Gamble is strengthening their leadership in Health Care and Beauty, two of 2003’s largest growing sectors. Proctor and Gamble has 5 billion dollar health care and beauty brands and they acquired a sixth in 2003. Meaning health care and beauty sales will account for half of the company’s sales and profits. In 2002, P&G reported net sales were $10.80 billion, up 11 percent versus 2001 sales.
Estee Lauder has recorded more than 45 consecutive years of annual sales increases. Estee Lauder’s net sales of all products sold in 130 countries reached $5.12 billion in 2003 this includes all labels-Estee Lauder, Clinique, Origins, Prescriptives and Aramis.
L’Oreal is the world’s largest beauty products company. In the past ten years the brand has shifted from 75 percent of sales in Europe to exporting brands around the world. Sales through June 2002 were €7.4 billion up from the first half of 2001 with €4 billion in consumer products and €1.8 billion in luxury products. L’Oreal aims for its 18th consecutive year of double-digit growth year-end 2002.
Avon is the world’s largest direct seller and sixth largest global beauty company with $6 billion in annual sales. Avon sells to women in 143 countries through 3.5 million independent sales representatives. Net sales have increased by 4 percent from 1997 to 2001 and this is expected to continue into 2003. Avon is starting a new line for younger consumers “mark”. It will launch in the fall of 2003 in the U.S. and in the second quarter of 2004 globally.
Beauty companies are doing well leading up to Dove’s launch of its Campaign for Real Beauty in 2004. The number of women in the United States and the influence they have on purchasing products make them the primary audience for consumer companies like Unilever to market towards. This combined with the results of women’s issues with the media’s portrayal of women create and ideal stage to launch a campaign focused on real women.

RESEARCH:
For years, the beauty industry and media have been constantly reminding women of the ideal body standards that have been set in today’s society. The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty, launched in 2004, was to support Dove’s mission of making women of all shapes and sizes feel beautiful every day, while widening stereotypical views of beauty. The campaign was inspired by a global study called “The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report.” As a company within the beauty industry, Dove wanted to have a better understanding of the issues regarding women and beauty by developing this study. Dove asked Dr. Nancy Etcoff, Harvard University professor and author of “Survival of the Prettiest,” and Dr. Susie Orbach, London School of Economics, visiting professor and author of “Fat is a Feminist Issue,” to help develop this global report. The study used quantitative data collected from an international study of 3,200 women from ten different countries between February 27, 2004 and March 26, 2004. Through the study, Dove aimed to explore the relationship women have with beauty, determine how women define beauty, learn the level of satisfaction with women’s beauty and the impact beauty has on the well-being of women. Through two key findings of the study, Dove was able to validate that the narrow definition of beauty is having a significant impact on the self-esteem of women today. The two findings are:
· Only 2% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful
· 81% of women in the United States strongly agree that “the media and advertising set an unrealistic standard of beauty that most women can’t ever achieve.”
In addition to these statistics, the study uncovered that only 5% of the women felt comfortable describing themselves as pretty and 9% felt comfortable describing themselves as attractive. When it came to body image and weight, women from all countries proved to be unsatisfied with themselves. The women of Japan had the highest levels of dissatisfaction with their body weight at 59%, followed by Brazil (37%), United Kingdom (36%), United States (36%), Argentina (27%) and the Netherlands (25%).
The study asked women about a wide range of issues regarding the mass media and pop culture. From all countries, cultures, ages, ethnicities and race, the women felt that there is a narrow definition of beauty. Specifically within today’s society, women acknowledged how they felt more pressure from the beauty standards set by the present mass media. Sixty-three percent strongly agreed that women today are expected to be more attractive than their mother’s generation.
The women surveyed believed that they are surrounded by unrealistic beauty images that are unattainable. The majority (76%) wished female beauty would be portrayed in the media as being made up more than just physical attractiveness. Also, seventy-five percent wished the media did a better job of portraying women of diverse physical attractiveness, including age, shape and size.
Based on these findings, Dove created The Campaign for Real Beauty to address the issues that were revealed in the study. Since the campaign has been launched, Dove has conducted numerous global and national studies. In 2005, Dove conducted the study, “Beyond Stereotypes: Rebuilding the Foundation of Beauty Beliefs.” This study collected information from 3,300 girls and women, between the ages of 15-64 from 10 different countries. This study was designed to explore self-esteem and the impact of beauty standards on both the lives of girls and women. The study showed that of the women and girls surveyed, 90% wanted to change at least one aspect of their physical appearance (with body weight ranking the highest). In addition, Dove found that 67% of all women withdrew from life-engaging activities due to feeling badly about their looks.
In 2006, Dove conducted the global report “Beauty Comes of Age.” The study surveyed a total of 1,450 women, aged 50-64, from 9 different countries. This report was done to help reveal the stereotypes associated with beauty and aging. Dove found that 91% of the women surveyed felt that the media and advertising need to do a better job of representing realistic images of women over 50. A vast majority of the women (97%) believed that society is less accepting of appearance considerations for women over 50 compared to their younger counterparts, especially when focused on the body.
In 2008, Dove commissioned the national report, “Real Girls, Real Pressure: A National Report on the State of Self-Esteem.” Girls ages 8-17 were surveyed and were asked questions based on the three areas of self-acceptance, confidence and emotional orientation. Scores were assigned based on how the girls rated themselves in the three areas. Girls were classified into three groups of high, average and low self-esteem, based on their individual scores. The report exposed that in the United States, seven in ten girls believe they are not good enough or do not measure up in some way, including their looks, academic performance and relationships with family and friends and 62% of all girls feel insecure or not sure of themselves. In comparing girls’ level of self esteem and their feelings on their own beauty, 71% of girls with low self-esteem felt their appearance did not measure up, including not feeling pretty enough, thin enough or stylish or trendy enough. This was compared to 29% of girls with high self-esteem.


EXECUTION:
What
Dove created The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty to help start a societal change and an expansion of the definition and discussion of beauty. The campaign supports Dove’s mission “to make more women feel beautiful everyday by widening stereotypical views of beauty.” The campaign uses advertising, a Web site, billboards, events, workshops, viral marketing and a Self-Esteem fund in Dove’s effort to create a global discussion about beauty with women all over the world. Rather than using professional models, the campaign stands by Dove’s mission in using “real” women of various ages, shapes and sizes to promote discussion and debate about the narrow beauty standards and images set in today’s society.

When/How
The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty was communicated to the public through a variety of print and television advertisements, a Web site, workshops and films. The campaign that launched in September 2004 began with an advertising campaign that featured women whose appearance strayed from the stereotypical beauty standards that are commonly seen in the media. Dove wanted to get “real” feedback by having the ads ask viewers to judge the women’s appearances. Viewers were asked to cast their votes on Dove’s Web site, campaignforrealbeatuy.com. The second phase of the campaign launched in June 2005 was print and outdoor advertisements that featured six everyday women who had real bodies and real curves. This phase was created to challenge the ideal body type standards set by the media. In February 2007, the third phase of the campaign was introduced with Dove using advertisements that targeted women 50 years and older. Annie Leibovitz, a world renowned photographer, was the artist behind the print and television advertisements, which celebrated the beauty in older women. Currently, the campaign focuses on young girls and self-esteem. For this part of the campaign Dove created self-esteem workshops and online self-esteem tools for mothers and daughters. In addition, Dove has created online films such as “Evolution,” “Onslaught” and “True Colors” which was a highly regarded commercial during the 2006 Super Bowl. Many of the tools used for the campaign are funded by the Dove Self-Esteem Fund. In the US, the fund supports Uniquely ME!, a program of the Girl Scouts of the United States, which aims to build confidence and self-esteem in young girls.

Where/Why
The campaign launched in England in September 2004. The Dove campaign was inspired by the study “The Real Truth about Beauty: A Global Report.” According to the Campaign for Real Beauty Mission, “the study validated the hypothesis that the definition of beauty had become limiting and unattainable.” The study showed that the narrow beauty standards were having a significant impact on the self-esteem of women. The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty was created to address this issue by attempting to widen the definition of beauty.

EVALUATION:
The results of this campaign were overwhelming from the consumers and the media. The goal was to reach 5 million young people with the Self-Esteem Fund by 2010 and according to their Web site, they have reached 2 million already.
The campaign returned $3 for every $1 spent. Dove’s page on Unilever’s Web site says that the current campaign has been shown on over 25 major TV channels and in more than 800 articles in opinion leading newspapers as well as in popular women’s magazines. In the first six months of the campaign, sales of Dove’s firming products increased 700 percent in Europe and in the United States, sales for the products in the advertisements increased 600 percent in the first two months of the campaign. In 2004, the first year of the campaign, global sales surpassed $1 billion, exceeding company expectations.
Dove’s public relations company built in news coverage for Asia with the Dove “models” appearing in 618 different newspaper clippings with a circulation of 139 million. By the end of 2005, sales in the Asian-Pacific market increased from 19 percent to 26 percent.
In the United States, the campaign got free advertising space from media coverage on national television shows reaching 30 million daytime television viewers. These shows included The Oprah Winfrey Show, which included the campaign everyday for a week, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Today Show, The View and CNN.
“Evolution” the viral video and the most famous execution of the campaign to date had global impact. The viral has been viewed more than 15 million times online and seen by more than 300 million people globally in various channels of distribution, including news coverage, by the estimation of Ogilvy Chairman-CEO Shelly Lazarus.
Dove and Ogilvy have won awards for this campaign. These include the two Grand Prix Cannes Advertising Awards in 2007. This is an unprecedented number of awards to win. “Evolution” the viral won Film Grand Prix and a Cyber Grand Prix. Dove won a silver IPA for effectiveness with the campaign. In 2006 it was awarded a Grand EFFIE, which honors the most significant achievement in marketing communications effectiveness.

Sources

Dove:
www.dove.com
www.campaignforrealbeauty.com
In the News- Campaign for Real Beauty
Unilever:
http://www.unilever.com/brands/personalcarebrands/dove.aspx
From Ogilvy:
http://www.ogilvy.co.uk/ogilvy-advertising/index.php/2008/11/05/dove-campaign-for-real-beauty-takes-silver-prize-at-the-ipa-2008-effectiveness-awards/

Other Sources:
Ad$pender database
http://www.brandrepublic.com/Campaign/News/532448/Top-Performers-2005-International-Advertiser-Year--Dove/
http://www.marketingprofs.com/7/dove-pro-age-primetime-women-barletta.asp
http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/resources/educational/teachable_moments/campaignrealbeauty.cfm
http://www.udel.edu/PR/UDaily/2007/apr/sports041207.html
http://adage.com/article?article_id=120091
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-2504316/Global-report-brands.html
Media Awareness Network- Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty
http://www.slideshare.net/finance3/pg-2003-annual-report
http://www.beautypackaging.com/articles/2005/10/top-20-global-beauty-companies.php
http://articles.latimes.com/2004/apr/26/local/me-lauder26
http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/gi_0199-2504316/Global-report-brands.html
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