Dove-Real Beauty

Beauty brands always use very beautiful women in their advertisements because they want people to believe that if they use their products they will get as beautiful as the women from the advertisements.

billboards like this around the world

Dove tried a different approach, Dove was the first beauty brand that started to promote real beauty. They used non-photoshopped women in their campaign. The campaign was launched in 2004 and was called “Real Beauty”. It had a lot of success because they used curvy women from all sizes. Also it was different because it didn’t focus on the products but on the target group.

In 2006 they launched the Dove Self-Esteem Fund. The Fund wants to change the Western concept of beauty. Each woman has to feel positive about her looks. A series of online-based short films had to promote this self-esteem concept. One of these short films (“Evolution”) won two Cannes Lions de Grand Prix.  The money the fund collects is donated too organisations that helps women and girls with their self-esteem.

http://www.dove.us/social-mission/our-vision/

Now they try to attack the problem at its source.

Dove asked Ogilvy and Mather Toronto to make a new campaign about pure beauty. They called the campaign “Thought Before Action”. Now they are coming with another campaign against the retouching of photos. They are already promoting real beauty for a decade and they have changed their tactics. Now they are trying to reach the people who manipulate their perceptions. Art directors, graphic designers and the people that retouch photos are the people they want to reach. They want to catch them while they are retouching photos and make them reconsider their choices dove did this by masking their message as Photoshop action. The Photoshop action was a downloadable file that applied an effect with a single click. When you use the application you see that it will return the photo to its original state.

In my opinion this is a good idea but it doesn’t has a lot of effect because people who retouch photos won’t stop retouching because it’s their job. The only effect of this campaign is that customers see that Dove cares about pure beauty. I like that Dove wants to promote pure beauty because in this way they are different from other beauty brands.

Thanks for reading and stay tuned.