Industry Issues 4 Dove

• Learning objective: To study the Dove advertising campaign with consideration given to Industry issues, Production, Distribution/ Exhibition

• Key words: Advertising, beauty, Ogilvy & Mather, Annie Leibovitz.

     These are the key areas we need to consider:

• Production
• Distribution and exhibition (where relevant)
• Marketing and promotion
• Regulation issues
• Global implications
• Relevant historical background and context - you should keep this part brief.

Advertising definition:

Advertising is a paid form of communication, delivered through media from an identifiable source, about an organization, product, service, or idea, designed to persuade the receiver to take some action, now or in the future.

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Production

The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty was started after Dove conducted a global study on beauty. The study called, The Real Truth About Beauty: A World Report confirmed that the definition for beauty had narrowed and was impossible to attain. Dove found that:

• Just 12 % of women are very satisfied with their physical attractiveness
• Only 2 % of women describe themselves as beautiful
• 68 % strongly agree that the media sets an unrealistic standard of beauty
• 75 % wish the media did a better job in portraying the diversity of women's physical attractiveness, including size and shape, across all ages

The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is a worldwide marketing campaign launched by Unilever in 2004 that includes advertisements, video, workshops, sleepover events, the publication of a book and the production of a play. 

Consumers were asked to make judgment about a series of photos of women who didn't fit the glossy mag mould. 

Was a plus-sized woman oversized or outstanding? 

Was a woman with small breasts half empty or half full?

The aim of the campaign is to celebrate the natural, physical variation embodied by all women and inspire them to have the confidence to be comfortable with themselves. 

Dove's partners in the effort include such marketing and communications agencies as Ogilvy & Mather, Edelman Public Relations, and Harbinger Communications (in Canada). 

Part of the overall project was the "Evolution" campaign.

By buying this product, the consumer is as if "buying herself" as well as reminding herself who she is, in this case a "real woman".
If a consumer buys a product she also buys the meaning behind it and thus buying the product the meaning then transfers onto her. 

In the process of reading and understanding an advertisement– the audience works with the messages in agreement with different perspectives,values, interests, things they stand for, lifestyle or social background. 

Task 1: 

Discuss this statement with reference to the Dove Real Women campaign and Coco Chanel.

'Dove are almost not selling a product, but a lifestyle behind it and the woman herself'.

Consider:

Aspiration
Personal identity
Decoding messages
Denotations
Connotations

Distribution/ Exhibition

The first stage of the campaign centred around a series of billboard advertisements, initially put up in the United Kingdom, and later worldwide. The spots showcased photographs of regular women (in place of professional models), taken by noted portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz.

The series received significant media coverage from talk shows, women's magazines, and mainstream news broadcasts and publications, generating media exposure which Unilever has estimated to be worth more than 30 times the paid-for media space.

In 2006, Ogilvy & Mather were seeking to extend the campaign further, by creating one or more viral videos to host on the Campaign for Real Beauty website. The first of these, Daughters, was an interview-style piece intended to show how mothers and daughters related to issues surrounding the modern perception of beauty and the beauty industry. It was during the production of Daughters that a series of short films entitled "Beauty Crackdown" was pitched to Unilever as an "activation idea." 
The concept was one that art director Tim Piper, who proposed to create Evolution with the budget left over from Daughters (C$135,000), pushed. It was originally intended to get people to visit the Campaign for Real Beauty website to see Daughters, and to participate in the workshops featured on the site.

In April 2013, a video titled Dove Real Beauty Sketches was released as part of the campaign. It went viral attracting strong reactions from the public and media. In the video, several women describe themselves to a forensic sketch artist who cannot see his subjects. The same women are then described by strangers whom they met the previous day. The sketches are compared, with the stranger's image invariably being both more flattering and more accurate. The differences create strong reactions when shown to the women.

Consider the following when discussing distribution:
Distribution for the advertising industry can be discussed in terms of placement. 
Other factors may include content, narrative, celebrity versus use of real people, psychological appeals.

It is acceptable to use the marketing of the texts as part of a discussion on how they have been distributed. 
You can discuss other factors which are key to the success of the texts but try to stay focused on what the question has asked. 

Task 2: 

With reference to your three main texts, discuss the key features of their distribution.

You should select key features to discuss, prioritise the features that you know you can write about with reference to the three campaigns.

make links in to

marketing/promotion; for others key points may be more industry/ownership based.

Some key points may include reference to:

• Financial – ownership, budget, etc

• Industry – size, scope

• Placement, marketing strategies

• Internet.

Give yourself about 30 - 40 minutes to answer.