MARKETING MANAGEMENT

Case Study 2
“Hips Feel Good” – Doves Campaign for Real Beauty

July 9, 2009 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Executive Summary…………………………………………………………………………………………….. 2
Problem Statement…………………………………………………………………………………………….. 3
Data Analysis………………………………………………………………………………………………………. 3
Alternatives Analysis…………………………………………………………………………………………… 8
Key Decision Criteria…………………………………………………………………………………………… 9
Recommendations……………………………………………………………………………………………… 10
Action and Implementation Plan………………………………………………………………………… 12
Implementation Roadmap....................................................................................... 13

Executive Summary
Unilever is a multi-national corporation, formed of British and Dutch parentage that owns many of the world’s consumer product brands in foods, beverages cleaning agents and personal care products. Unilever employed 174,000 people and had a worldwide revenue of €40.5 billion in 2008. Unilever's main competitors include Procter & Gamble, Nestlé, Kraft Foods, Mars, Reckitt Benckiser, Henkel and Spotless Group.

The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is a worldwide marketing campaign launched in 2004 that includes advertisements, videos, workshops, sleepover events and even the publication of a book and the production of a play. The principle behind the campaign is to celebrate the natural physical variation embodied by all women and inspire them to have the confidence to be comfortable with them.

The campaign featured normal women of different shapes and sizes recruited in a number of ways; one was approached in the street, another answered an ad which was placed in a local South London newspaper. This campaign has also spurred on a phenomenon whereby attractive women with bodies that better reflect 95% of the female population are referred to as Dove Mediocrities.

As part of this campaign, in 2006, Dove started the Dove Self-Esteem Fund that claims to change the Western concept of beauty from ultra-thin models with perfect features to making every girl (and woman) feel positive about her looks, no matter what they are. In an effort to promote the Fund, Dove ordered a series of highly-successful online-based short films promoting the self-esteem concept, which to date includes Daughters (which also aired as a 75-second television spot souring the Super Bowl XL), Evolution (which went on to win a number of honors, including two Cannes Lions Grand Prix awards), Onslaught, and Amy.

This case describes the situation of Dove as a brand and presents a proposal of what the strategy must continue in order to remain successful and attractive to the consumers.

Problem Statement

In order to gain market share, Dove has launched a campaign that has the purpose of improving brand image by connecting the to a new concept of beauty. This concept relies on the idea that beauty is not longer a utopian state based on the typical stereotypes of beautifulness; instead, this new concept is based on real people of different shapes, sizes, and colors, encouraging people to love themselves as they are.

The first results were successful; Dove made a bond with the society and people started to identify themselves with the brand and therefore demanded more of Dove’s products. However, changing the world’s concept of beauty is not an easy task. On one hand, people have an innate tendency to compare themselves with the established stereotypes pushing them to desire perfect beauty and alternatively, competitors’ strategies are built on ideal beauty, so either they will fight back against real beauty campaign or they will copy the strategy.

Can Dove maintain the success of the real beauty and the self-esteem campaigns, breaking definitely society stereotypes and facing competitors?

Data Analysis

In the world of advertising, any imperfection is simply airbrushed out of existence. Bombarded by these perfect images, it is no wonder that most women end up feeling bad about what nature gave them.

The Dove Research Study

The company hired a global research firm StrategyOne, to conduct a research which answered, four basic questions:

• What do women mean by beauty?
• How happy are they with their own beauty?
• How does a woman’s sense of her own beauty affect her well-being?
• What influence does mass media and pop culture have on the perception of ideal beauty?

StrategyOne worked with experts from Massachusetts General Hospital, the Harvard University Program in Aesthetics and Well Being, and the London School of Economics. The firm surveyed 3,200 women from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, France, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States. The following were the most notable observations:

• Only two per cent of women described themselves as beautiful.
• 47 per cent said they were overweight.
• Media and advertising set an unrealistic standard of beauty
• Beauty could be achieved through attitude, spirit and other attributes that have nothing to do with physical appearance.
• 45 per cent believed that women who are more beautiful have greater opportunities in life.
• 26 per cent have considered plastic surgery.

Actions and Campaign

The Campaign For Real Beauty

“We want to challenge the definition of the beauty. We believe that beauty has become too narrow in definition. We want to defy the stereotype that only young, blond and tall are beautiful.” Phillippe Harousseau, Dove’s Marketing Director.
The campaign is defined by Dove as a global effort with the purpose of serving as a starting point for social change playing an important role on widening the definition of beauty. This campaign supports Dove’s mission: “to make more women feel beautiful every day by widening stereotypical views of beauty.”
By reading the mission, we can become conscious of the bright and marvelous idea behind the campaign. According to the survey results, only 2% of women considered themselves beautiful. This is because they compare themselves against a very specific standard of beauty, which only few people fit (for example, supermodels).
Leaving aside marketing and commercial efforts, it is a fact that there is no product in the world that can make miracles happen; this means that no body cream or beauty product can change a normal woman into a supermodel. As a result, the strategy of Unilever was to bring down the measurement line (or widen the definition) by telling the world a revolutionary idea linked to the Dove Brand, “beauty comes in all sizes, colors and shapes”. Unilever got as result more women feeling attractive, which have now a bond with the brand behind the revolution.

Debunking Stereotypes Launched in 2004, the ad campaign featured real women whose appearances are outside the stereotypical norms of beauty. The ads asked viewers to judge women’s looks (Oversized? Outstanding? Wrinkled? Wonderful?) and invited them to cast their votes on www.campaignforrealbeauty.com. In 2005, Dove launched the second phase of this advertising, showing six real women with real bodies and real curves, which was created to discredit the stereotype that only thin is good-looking. By 2007, Dove launched the third phase of the campaign, attempting to challenge the “only young is beautiful” stereotype. This was based on the dove global study “Beauty comes of Age” which revealed 91% of women ages 50-64 believe its time for society to change its view about women and aging. The campaign celebrates the essence of women 50+: wrinkles, age spots, gray hair and all. Currently the campaign for real beauty is focused on how today girls are bombarded with unrealistic, unattainable messages and images of beauty that impact their self-steem.1

Boosting self-esteem around the world
The research also revealed an alarming 74% of 8-13 year-old girls saying they wanted to change their appearance . Based on this, the company created the Dove Self-Esteem Fund, which has the purpose of building self confidence in young girls. The Fund also collaborates with organizations like the Eating Disorders Association (EDA) who are developing new ways to increase self-esteem. EDA has developed a workshop designed to help young girls (and boys) understand and deal with feelings about their physical appearance. It also teaches them about how “ideal” images of beauty are created.
Through these actions, Unilever is increasing their brand awareness and making a bond with young girls which in some way became customers and will remain like that in the future.

Controversy with real beauty campaign

A situation arose after Dove’s campaign for real beauty was launched. People started thinking that Dove was not sending out the correct message. There were severe responses to each of the phases of the campaign. For the phase called “True Colors”, in which young girls are shown saying that one hates her freckles and another one “wishes she was blonde ”. The idea behind Dove’s campaign is to say that every woman should love herself just the way she is. The replies many people made included that hating one’s freckles is not necessarily implying a low self-esteem; it is just saying that you dislike some part of your body and that is it. If people embrace fully the campaign and feel that everything is perfect, fat people may eventually show more dangerous health problems because of them being comfortable with their obesity. The controversy with this phase of the campaign was that hating one part of your body did not make you a low self-esteem person.
The idea for the “love your hair” campaign was that women spend too much time, energy, money and resources when they go to the beauty salon and they only end up “frying” their hair, so they suggest to just love your hair the way it is. The responses to that ad were that, again, wanting to vary your hairdo by using curling irons or by changing its color is not necessarily a sign of low self-esteem. The Dove campaigns were taken to extremes, when all they were trying to achieve was to improve self-esteem.
Furthermore, for the Onslaught campaign, reactions included people feeling that they were being mean and judgmental, since “Participating in fashion, cosmetics, exercise, or even plastic surgery doesn't necessarily make a girl unhealthy. ” The argument here is that not because you want to correct a part of your body or your appearance that you are not comfortable with means that you are mentally unhealthy or that you have low self-esteem. The idea is that Dove’s campaigns should not be as radical as they are being handled. It is clear that they don’t think that the beauty industry is evil, they are the second largest participant.

Contradictions at Unilever: Dove vs. Axe

Unilever faced controversy due to two contrary brand advertisings. First, the one for Dove that praises women and their natural beauty and also the one for Axe, which is seen by some people as "blatantly objectifies and degrades" women. The idea behind Axe’s campaign is to appeal to boys and young men by presenting very attractive women that will instantly go after them if they use the product. Axe, being another product from Unilever, opposes completely the idea behind the Dove campaign. Many people see this opposing ideas as offensive, which has brought negative publicity to Unilever. In the end, Unilever is a big part of the beauty industry: “It is the world’s second biggest advertiser and manufacturer of skin whiteners, diet drinks, cosmetics, and other beauty products.” Many people are not taking so seriously the campaign for Dove, since the same agency worked on the campaign for Axe . Such divergent propositions send mixed ideas to the market, making them not want to purchase Unilever’s products.

Contradictions at Unilever: Greenpeace vs. Dove Unilever faced another challenge: when they released the Onslaught campaign, Greenpeace replied to it by producing a video very much alike but titled: Onslaught(er), portraying how Unilever’s products come from natural resources and the company is doing nothing to replenish what they are using. What Greenpeace argues as being the main reason for their campaign is the following: “As the biggest single buyer of palm oil in the world, Unilever has a special responsibility to help clean up the industry that's behind so much forest destruction .” Environmentalists, naturalists and other groups reacted to the campaign, putting pressure over Unilever, who then had to take action and engage in social responsibility programs that are supposed to help the environment. The campaign aired for two weeks only, but the pressure was such, that Unilever had to start operating a plan to prevent deforestation and to encourage reforestation.

Alternatives Analysis

1- Keep creating deeper connections with women on the most personal level. This means, intensify the corporate social responsibility of the brand by stretching even more the bonds and building truth among customers, making a movement instead of a campaign. By doing this the company can remain close to the customers identifying real needs, and helping the society fight the stereotypes of beauty.

2- Modify the actual direction of the real beauty campaign through a less realistic and more institutional campaign. This mean maintaining the campaign by talking and bluffing a lot about the issue but expending less money and effort in trying to solve stereotypes beauty problems of society and focusing more on sales strategies which take advantage of the emerging awareness of the brand.

3- Change the direction of the campaign by leaving aside the real beauty and reinforce the functional strengths of the brand as the mildness. The company can take advantage of the recent awareness of the brand and give a change of direction based on the functional strengths.

Key decision criteria

Key Decision Criteria could be:
• Possibility to gain Market Share (M.S.)
• Increase Revenues (I. R.)
• Improve the brand image (B. I.)
• Strengthen the brand (B. S.)
• Perception as an outstanding product (O. P.)
• Stockholder Satisfaction (S. S.)
• Reach new customers (N. C.)
• Improve communication about Dove products (I. C.)

Evaluation of the Key decision criteria in a decision-making matrix (-1, 0, +1):

Alternative M. S. I. R. B. I. B. S. O. P. S. S. N. C. I. C. Sum
1 1 1 1 1 0 1 1 1 7
2 -1 -1 -1 -1 0 -1 -1 -1 -7
3 0 0 0 0 1 1 0 1 3 Decision-making Matrix Recommendations

In order to prepare Dove for the next stage of the re-launch, the question is what is the goal of Dove for the next stage? Was the target of the first stage to strengthen the brand and the perception of the brand at their customers through outstanding campaigns, the next step is to keep and strengthen the whole image even to increase it, in order to gain more revenues. Another goal is to communicate the Dove products so that statements in advertisements appear more sincere.

The main problem here is the competition. It can be expected that the competition will adopt parts of the successful marketing strategy and try to gain hereby market-share. Due to the fact that the first re-launch produced already all the demanded improvements and the competition is now aware of the marketing strategy of Dove it is hard to establish new ways to keep or even increase revenues and the brand-equity. But according to the decision making matrix alternative 1 is the best option to reach this ambitious goal. Compared to the other two alternatives, alternative 1 is honest with the target-group of Dove and it gives possibilities to reach new customers and thus increase the revenues and participate more market-share.

The first step for the additional re-launch stage is to keep and strengthen the already established bond between women. Regarding the statistics, just two percent of all requested women believe that they are pretty. So the main goal has to keep on tracking the 98percent that don’t believe in their natural beauty. That means to follow the started campaigns in TV, radio, in school as well as the catalogs for moms and daughters. The catalogs and workshops have to be updated frequently in order to provide the most actual information and service to the customers and to gain constant interest in it. The updates have to occur simultaneous to the launch of new products and thus to the development process.

But beside the passive connection to the customer as readers and silent participants of the workshops, the active part has to be reinforced. Customers should have the feeling that they are part of Dove, by having the opportunity to run workshops and to share their experience with other participants.

The next step for Dove to gain revenues would be the 2% of the women who think they are already pretty as an additional target group. Thereby Dove has to act very sensitive. Instead of changing their way of advertising with “normal average looking” women of the street, Dove could launch promotions at fashion shows or beauty events. Thus Dove could advert to their advantages in comparison to other products and that even “models” can take care of their beauty with Dove products. Hereby Dove has to act very careful in order not offending their core target group, the 98% of women who don’t believe in their natural beauty. A wrong launched campaign would be seen as perfidiousness.

Finally, new campaigns could be launched in areas where Dove was not active so far. For example catalogs and workshops in kindergartens, nursing homes, or in charity accommodations, in order to gain more positive media perception. Dove could also work together with dermatologists that support the companies’ statements about the natural ingredients and affirm the difference to competitor products. Therefore a new medical product line for dermatologists and pharmacies could be developed.
Dove could also consider about launching a business-line and providing workshops and guidebooks to companies where the skin of people is stressed, like the mining-, steel- and construction industry, etc.

Implementation Plan

According to the recommendation, the plan is to strengthen the brand position by stretching more the bonds with women.

In order to do this, the first thing to do is to identify whether the ideal of beauty has changed in the past 5 years. A marketing research must be conducted to learn how the perception of beauty has evolved and what the current trends are in terms of beauty products.

Secondly, a study of competition campaigns has to be done to see whether copying Dove’s campaign is being also successful for them or whether they are using a different strategy to compete.

Based on these researches, the next step is to prepare a reinforcement of the campaign by adding new and innovative ads using new concepts of beauty, which could be for example intelligence, self-confidence, professional realization or family (not only physical aspects). These would improve the bond that existed with women, because consumers will realize that Dove is evolving together them. This will give Dove a competitive advantage because the competition is now copying the strategy that Unilever launched years ago.

This reinforcement gives a good opportunity to use new channels that were not used before and could be used to leverage the brand potential and reach new consumers.

Throughout the implementation of this strategy it is important to also maintain and improve stakeholders engagement, and to do this Unilever must establish social responsibility programs and they need to work together with dermatologists that support the companies’ statements about the natural ingredients and affirm the difference to competitor products, this will project to the consumers the message that Dove cares about the environment, one of the things that currently is seen as attractive in a brand and that makes a company sustainable through the years.

Finally, the active participation of women has to increase by creating more opportunities of interaction, like blogs or discussion forums and bringing more people to participate in these activities. Also the use of workshops, expos, congresses and appearance of Dove in social events that are important for women today will be key to improve the participation in the campaign and to obtain a full involvement of the consumer.