No, not Charlie Sheen. It’s Dove, the personal care brand. If you’re female, you know it and quite likely have a soft spot in your heart for it. With its Campaign for Real Beauty, Dove has for years taken a stand against the toxic media messages that make girls and women feel bad about their appearance. You know, the messages that make you feel you should be ashamed unless every part of you is model-perfect.
Like your armpits. Huh? That’s right, your pits. They’re ugly. But don’t worry, there’s a cure for your secret source of shame. Dove deodorant! Specifically, Dove Ultimate Go Sleeveless. That’s right, Dove. Champion of self-esteem for girls, champion of real beauty. Dove, producer of short films like this:
Big vs. little picture
On one level, I get it, I really do. Dove deodorant needs to make their numbers like everybody else. And deodorant is a particularly tough category: mature and crowded, with little room for expanded usage. In classic CPG tradition, they mined their research for something that could differentiate them in a logical, linear way. They may have thought they stumbled on a potential goldmine: a new dimension of benefits heretofore untapped—attractiveness! Inspired by Unilever research showing 93% of women think their underarms are unattractive, they introduced Dove Ultimate Go Sleeveless this month. With its unique moisturizing formula, Dove promises to give you prettier pits in five days.
Left-brain reasoning (analysis, logic, categories and details) was on their side in many ways. According to a WSJ article, Unilever’s research showed women experience underarm problems ranging from breakouts to embarrassment requiring a change of clothes. “One in three said they feel more confident when their pits are in good condition, leading Mr. Dwyer (U.S. Marketing Director for Unilever’s deodorant business) to say, ‘How can we give them that confidence?’ “
You can’t have it both ways
But Dove isn’t everybody else, numbers or no. Dove has stood for something bigger and more important. According to the brand’s own website: “The Dove mission is to make women feel more beautiful every day by challenging today’s stereotypical view of beauty and inspiring women to take great care of themselves.”
In other words, Dove has stood for challenging why women should even consider linking their confidence with the state of their armpits.
Dove has rightfully won a place in the minds and hearts of women by taking a stand on a social issue that matters. And it’s built its brand in the process, with one in three U.S. households using a Dove product.
Right-brain thinking is all about the big-picture: what inspires, connects, and moves us—the kind of thinking that led to the Campaign for Real Beauty in the first place. Brands need both, clearly, but few brands have exhibited the right-brained vision and wholehearted courage Dove has to stake out and protect a relevant, believable piece of controversial, higher-ground turf. Such thinking is particularly rare in the bland, commoditized world of mass-market personal care products.
But they risk all of that if they behave like opportunists, trying to cash in on the kind of manufactured anxiety the beauty industry specializes in–which Dove has admirably worked to combat. Other brands, other deodorants can trumpet their ability to beautify armpits with nothing to lose. Dove has a lot at stake: its credibility as anything more than a shallow umbrella brand for products with moisturizing formulas.
Have they come to their senses?
In the course of writing this post I’ve been back and forth on the Dove website. Over this short period I’ve found the site changing–error messages frequent–and at this point there’s very little about Ultimate Go Sleeveless. Just some fairly innocuous copy about delicate underarm skin and how the product helps, though they do sign off with a salute to pit beauty: “Goodbye sleeves. Hello beautiful underarms!” Have they yanked the more controversial elements of their campaign? I hope so.
Full disclosure: I have some skin in this game. Early in my Brandland career I managed Dove, when it was just Dove Beauty Bar. I’m proud to have played a role in opening an early door to what the brand’s become by evolving the advertising from a functional emphasis to a story of personal authenticity and emotion. Together with my wonderful Ogilvy creative team, we produced a low-budget test commercial focused on the story of one middle-aged woman with pudgy cheeks who experienced herself as beautiful when she switched to Dove. It racked up the highest ad scores in Lever Brothers’ history, and I persuaded risk-averse management to run with it. It was hugely successful in ways too numerous to mention here. So I’m not neutral on the subject of Dove. But not just because it’s “my” brand.
It’s our brand, and at a time when so few brands really matter, it has mattered. We deserve better, and Dove deserves better than a foolish short-term ploy by a pit bully.
