DOVE (Deniz 's INPUT)

Question 1J “For too long, beauty has been defined by narrow, stifling stereotypes,” said Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty website. “Women have told us it’s time to change all that. Dove agrees. We believe real beauty comes in many shapes, sizes and ages.”…
What Dove thinks is what women think… After searching several on net to have an idea about the viewpoint of bloggers about Dove campaign, the results are highly convoluted. Some bloggers support the idea of Real Beauty and have the similar feelings of inner beauty-or natural beauty- while some have found it not really REAL, and highlighted various kinds of controversies under different titles.
The ones who supported the campaign have some core points with Dove in this point: What is the meaning of Beauty? Before “young, white, blonde, and thin” which are the characteristic of women in media and beauty sector were the keys to use in ads in beauty sector. Moreover than that the woman body became a sexual icon with the perfect shape and bedecked the posters, billboards, TV ads and etc. However Dove brought a new understanding of ‘self-esteem’ and made a revolutionary act to change the concept of “real beauty” by using real Women’ rather than the models.
Actually regarding the case Dove s campaign was not an unconsciousness advertisement campaign. The background of the campaign was directed by several researches, interviews, surveys, psychiatrists’ consultations, and conversation with women. etc. We can basically say that only thing Dove did was involving the consumers-women to the campaign. (Exhibit 4)
On the other hand, as I mentioned before, there are also people who do not like the campaign. Some are criticizing the ‘Real Beauty’ as being not real by using Photoshop while some other are mainly discussing the obscure view of the women.
However, without any doubt Dove did a good job for “brand awareness” . There are several blogs, YouTube videos about Dove so we can say Dove get the attention of people. In the very early stages of the campaign” Dove Marketing director for US Kathy O’Brien, told the press that the company wanted the ads to : change the way society views beauty and provoke discussion and debate about real beauty” And this is what exactly Dove did with the “Real Beauty Campaign”

Question 2J
By all these campaigns on cyber world, Dove creates good brand awareness inevitably. By the new advertisement Dove is valuing its name, and not just the brand name itself but make s people feel different too. TO be more clear I will quote from a blogger: “This ad is very real. They're not doing anything special to try and sell you. They're actually taking a very large part in raising awareness that every woman is beautiful, as well as to teach young girls that they don't need to idolize, or compare themselves to airbrushed models on TV.” (http://digitaldivasthoughts.blogspot.com/2007/02/dove-says-normal-is-new-beautiful.html)
Moreover than the brand awareness and global Dove Self-esteem fund (to develop the self esteem among the girls and women) which can be accepted as a public responsibility, Dove also organized a contest for the consumers to create their own ads. By doing this they keep the costumers (“real” women)/audience incorporated to the campaign. For the new way of marketing the consumers are not passive anymore. They were totally inside the campaign by blogs, forums, or other social network websites mainly by word of mouth, by a “cheap and fast “way of advertisement. However it is clear that this cheap way of advertisement is not easy to control anymore by Dove. By letting people to post or share videos such as YouTube, Google Video, Dove has to face with problems arising for the brand. By this cheap model became out of control for Dove , certainly. Unilever and public relations team also had difficulty to come to a decision at that moment whether to change the way they are doing for the controversies or accepting the debates and increase it gradually.
Obviously Dove s marketing strategy is processing well by just looking at the numbers given in the case: “In September 2006 Landor associates identified Dove as one of the 10 brads with the greatest percentage gain in brand health and the business value in the past 3 years. It computed that the brand had grown by $1.2 billion.” Although it is not clarified whether the campaign has worked or not (if we take into consideration that the campaign started in early 2000s) there should be the campaign’s effect on this growth. So I think there is not a real risk for Dove .