Marketing Management

Dove: Global Beauty Close at Heart
Problem Statement
Dove has decided to shift its focus from the traditional approach of marketing product results. Instead it will focus its marketing on making more women feel beautiful. In doing so, Dove has moved to a controversial viewpoint which has the potential to either entice more customers to buy Dove or alienate it from all beauty product buyers. In an age of uncertain social media, how does Dove excel as a master brand using the Campaign for Real Beauty?
Situational Analysis
Extensive research went into the development of the Campaign for real beauty; including using psychologists to gage women’s perceptions. Public reaction to the first few ads was positive. The Tick‐
Box campaign quickly moved from the majority of voters labeling the women as “outsized” to
“outstanding”. Dove created a self‐esteem commercial which personalized the brand with consumers.
Oprah Winfrey used the ad and devoted an entire show to self‐esteem issues bringing positive media attention to the campaign. Also, the film “Evolution” was displayed by YouTube and became the most downloaded commercial ever, with 3 million views in 3 months. The Real Beauty topic became a prime talking point for discussions and debates within media outlets.
The Real Beauty brought about concern for the consumer’s willingness to spend more money on a brand that doesn’t promise to make them more beautiful. Dove could potentially be viewed as an ordinary brand versus a brand that allows women the ability to dream. If Dove receives a negative reaction, there is potential for other brands under Dove to be impacted negatively.
Social media created a huge opportunity for the Real Beauty campaign by reaching an audience on a global scale. Dove has the ability to effectively segment the consumers and reach them through additional YouTube commercials and leveraging Twitter and other social media outlets. In addition to their current products, there is potential growth in branching out to related products such as detergents or shaving creams. Also, Dove could open retail stores representing the Dove brand.
Along with the opportunities presented by social media, Dove faced the threat of negative reactions to the Real Beauty campaign. Social media has the potential to turn against the brand in a rapid manner.
Other media outlets have criticized the campaign from the mindset that beauty products should advertise beautiful women.
Objectives
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Infuse more Dove products into everyday life around the world.
No matter how a woman feels about herself, beautiful or not, Dove is their product of choice.

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Connect on a visceral and more frequent level with more consumers.
Enter 20% more countries, up from 80 today.
Increase sales by 20% in two years.

Analysis of Alternatives
Dove should segment their consumer base in order to address the greater than 55% of the female population that feels “natural” or “average”. This statistic is noted in Exhibit 4 of the Dove Case Study.
Exhibit 4 also shows the twelve self‐descriptor categories from which women had to choose. Less than
20% of the time women used the categories of attractive, pretty, beautiful, sophisticated, sexy, stunning and gorgeous to describe the way they look. A company will limit their sales opportunities if they only market to those 20% of women. Traditionally, a beauty company marketed their products to transform the natural and average looking women into feeling gorgeous, sexy, and beautiful. What if a woman just needs to feel beautiful without feeling the need to alter themselves? Continuing to be told the same looks‐improving message over and over again, without a noticeable effect, would ultimately push a consumer away from a brand. Dove should embrace all consumers and help them feel confident in the way they look.
The products that exist for women could be slightly altered to be positioned with men. Segmenting into feminine and masculine product lines should be a rather easy way to boost sales. In a dramatic case it would double them, if market share percentages held, since Dove would be catering to a market twice its original size. Men are habitually told to they need to be tough, strong, sexy and smooth and buying certain products will help them accomplish these goals. In a similar fashion to how Dove connects with the average woman, segmenting the products to cater to the male population should help contribute to global growth. (See Exhibit 1 for advertisement example.)
As a second alternative, targeting the internet savvy consumer through additional social media campaigns could be a way to boost global growth. Building on the aforementioned segmentation work,
Dove could reach sales and new market penetration goals via the expanded and affordable reach of the internet. From the consumer’s standpoint, immediate feedback on a product or company is becoming quite popular. Unless the product itself is poor, the argument could be made that any press is good press so a social media campaign for Dove carries little risk. Dove had established itself through decades of high performance as a cleansing bar that didn’t dry out the skin. It had been tapped as a
Masterbrand by Unilever so that its brand was strong enough to withstand any potential blemish in its marketing strategy. The use of the internet has been growing exponentially since the year 2000.
Companies are growing their online advertising budgets, expressing their opinions, and reaching a global audience instantly, in a way like never before. (See Exhibit 2 for advertisement example.)
Positioning new Dove products into everyday life would be a third alternative to reaching objectives. A brand is a representation of how the market views a product or portfolio of products. Taking the Dove name as the master brand and both consolidating existing products and expanding into additional products would simplify the way the market viewed the Dove products. If a consumer is accustomed to seeing Dove as their daily cleansing bar, they may be more willing to consider the use of additional Dove

items as a normal part of living. Possible expansions include shaving cream, hand sanitizer, liquid detergent, laundry detergent and hand lotion. (See Exhibit 3 for advertisement example) While Dove has maintained a strong position in the adult market, Dove should further develop products for babies and children. This would be a way to tap the consumer at an early age to transform them into truly life‐ long customers. Few people would argue about the beauty associated with a newborn baby. As much controversy that has been generated from the Real Beauty Campaign more consumers may be willing to rally around a baby‐centered ad campaign.
If there is not an interest in research and development for youth products, perhaps it would make sense to buy the arm of another company and rebrand it, i.e. Pampers by Dove. In this way a consumer is buying two established brands in one.
Recommendation
As a global company, Unilever would be wise to build a more formal, global social media campaign.
Dove, as a proven product, has already penetrated 80 countries. Global internet usage is on the rise, as noted in Exhibit 5. Blending these two points into a campaign that easily spreads with little cost would help them grow into new countries and drive sales.
Referencing Exhibit 4 of the Case Study once again, we see that women’s opinions across the world are similar in many respects. If a campaign being used in the USA is resonating with the population, it would seem to make sense to scale it and grow it globally. Assimilating the faces and figures to local tastes would be about all that is required. It could be a truly global campaign that seeks to connect with the self‐described natural and average looking woman. Contemporaneously, Dove could use this global platform to push their new products for men. Men and women are quickly turning to online outlets for information, research and public opinions. Given the buzz that a social media campaign generates, it would make sense to conduct it around products that both men’s and women’s product. If Unilever decides to expand into products for babies and children, they could center their rollout in countries whose youth populations are a higher percentage than those of an older age.
A disadvantage to leveraging this alternative strategy is leaving the perception of the product in the court of public opinion; this has been one of the ongoing criticisms of the Campaign for Real Beauty. A global campaign would only swell the points of view whereby a negative opinion could be amplified more quickly. (See Exhibit 6).
That said, through years of functional advertising, Dove has established its credibility as a solid, high performing brand. Unilever should leverage Dove’s rich history to expand into the men, babies, children and household product lines. While many folks around the world may understand Dove to be a woman’s cleansing bar and nothing more, leveraging social media will help Dove venture into new markets with an expanded portfolio of products. This would fulfill Unilever’s mission of building Dove as a Masterbrand.

Implementation
Dove needs to understand which internet sites are more popular and well visited when expanding deeper into the countries they already serve. Designing a social media campaign with sites that consumers cannot access – for government censure reasons, as an example – would handcuff Dove’s expansion before it began. Dove should proactively work with internet companies in target countries to be the brand that reaches their consumers the quickest through social media marketing.
Due to an increasing amount of people using the internet for ordering products and watching the news,
Dove should expand their online advertising. Dove should ask consumers to participate in online surveys and provide the consumer with coupons for purchases their products in return.
In conjunction with the social media blitz, Dove should continue its reach into everyday life of the consumer in a masculine bent by pushing advertising further into the sports industry. Dove should consider sponsoring sports stadiums, race cars, and other high profile athletic events. Exhibit 4 portrays how this sponsorship could manifest itself.
Finally, Dove should continue its campaign for Real Beauty. As global body awareness and acceptance grows, so will the market opportunities for this campaign.

Exhibit 1

Dove Hunting

TV commercial featuring men in camouflage talking to all kinds of women. When asked what they are doing they respond “Dove Hunting – looking for real women.”.

Exhibit 2

InnerNational Beauty
InnerNational Beauty

Campaign focused upon making inner beauty an international theme

Exhibit 3

Campaign for Real Clean
Campaign for Real Clean

Dove branching out into new areas such as cleaning products, hand sanitizers, children s lines,
Dove branching out into new areas such as cleaning products hand sanitizers children’s lines and more men’s products including a shaving line.

Exhibit 4

Targeting Dove to Men

Exhibit 5

Exhibit 6

Weakness of Social Media Campaign
Weakness of Social Media Campaign