Dove Brand Analysis

* Brand Description
Dove is the world’s number one personal care brand owned by Unilever, selling products such as beauty bar, deodorants, hair care products and facial cleansers in more than 80 countries.

Brand History
Dove launched its first product — beauty bar in 1957 and then became a leading brand. In 2000, Dove became a Masterbrand of Unilever and expanded to personal care category. Since then Dove started series of new revolutionary campaigns such as “ the Campaign for Real Beauty”, which triggered hot social discussion and attracted considerable social attentions.

Product Characteristics
Functional: Dove’s products are characteristic of mild, moisturizing, and one-quarter cleansing cream. Dove stays with the claim not to dry skin the way any other personal care products do and is widely endorsed by dermatologists.
Emotional: Consumers can become more beautiful on their own way, feel more confident and self-esteem, and celebrate their individuality and unique real beauty.

Brand Values and Personality
Dove values real beauty, self-esteem, inclusion and diversity, and social responsibility. Dove tries to change the traditional way society views beauty and highlights real beauty. Dove wants to be considered as a real, confident, innovative, and unique brand. In consumers’ minds, Dove is always associated with naturalness, purity, sincerity, youth, high self-esteem and real beauty on own way.

* Consumer Description
Target Audience
Dove targets everyday girls and women of all ages, shapes and sizes who favor real beauty and prefer high-quality personal care products to keep their bodies clean and soft.

Consumer Resonance
Attachment: Dove’s consumers establish considerable emotional connections and attachment to Dove through its campaigns such as “the Campaign for Real Beauty”, “Self-Esteem Campaign”, and “Evolution Filming Campaign”.
Engagement: Dove’s consumers are actively engaged in Dove’s various events, workshops, and Dove’s own huge community. * Touchpoints

Dove tries to surround the target consumer at various touchpoints with relevant content where they live, work and play, by using social media, Youtube, billboard, etc.

Youtube
As Dove targets everyday women and girls, Youtube is one of the best choices to get as wide audiences as possible. Moreover, Dove’s campaign films are always of unusual lengths, making television advertising not a good option.
Until now Dove has successfully released several films to Youtube, such as “Evolution” film and “Real Beauty Sketches” film, which are among the most downloaded and shared commercials on Youtube. Once posted to Youtube, these short films acquired millions of views, downloads, and sharing within months. Containing revolutionary views such as “real beauty”, these films sparked hot discussion among society and became the subject of newspaper, radio and television. This kind of exposure letted Dove acquire considerable consumers’ attentions and establish more strong emotional connection and attachment with target audience.

Billboard
Dove uses billboard to reach to everyday women and girls. For example, in Tick-Box campaign, billboards were erected and viewers were asked to phone to vote on whether a woman on the billboard was “ outsized” or “outstanding”. And a counter on the billboard showed the votes in real time. In further campaign for real beauty, Dove bought every billboard in Grand Central station to build a buzz.

Social Media
Dove incorporates social media such as Facebook and Twitter to engage target consumer and create its own community. Dove has 23,359,582 likes on Facebook and 13 million followers on Twitter now. Through social media, Dove listens to consumers and also sparks rich dialogue and open conversation with them. Dove stay true to brand while also creating opportunities for it to be relevant. For example, Dove has engaged target with timely and relevant conversation about beauty, motherhood and other topics that matter to girls and women.