Dove recently launched a new Reality Prank called "Patches." It's a continuation of the "Real Beauty" theme Dove launched ten years ago. The critics say it's more thinly-veiled capitalism from Dove and, worse, tricks women. But before I get to why I believe these critics are off-base, take a look at the film for yourself:
New York Magazine headline: "This Dove Ad Is Garbage." Author, Maggie Lange, took issue with how the women were portrayed:
Shame upon you, Dove, for making these women seem dumb, and for not scripting at least one of them to act outraged that she had been duped.
Carolyn Thomas, author of the blog, The Ethical Nag, found the ad insulting to women:
Let me make this perfectly clear, in case some of you still think that Unilever, the company that makes Dove beauty products, is somehow in the business of caring about women’s fragile self-esteem.
Unilever, as I wrote here previously, is in the business of convincing you to buy their products. Period.
I have no way of proving whether or not Dove, the brand, actually cares about women's self-esteem. Does Nike really care about an average athlete's performance? But does it matter if the brand "cares," if real inspiration happens?
Was it a twist of fate, cosmic justice, ironic or just a coincidence that when I was on the New York Magazine web site, I inadvertently rolled over a Toni & Guy banner ad that auto-played a clip of a beautiful, typical, skinny, hair-model enticing me to "Get the season's hottest looks" by clicking on the banner?
I vote for cosmic justice, but maybe that's just me.
Thomas is right about one thing: Unilever is trying to convince women to buy their products.
Actually, it's Dove in this case, but Unilever I guess sounded bigger and badder for Thomas' purposes. Regardless, it is no crime to use advertising to convince people to buy products. If anything, it's patronizing to her readers to suggest they didn't know that Dove was in business to make money.
But think about it this way. Dove was faced with two potential paths on the road of advertising:
- Dove could try to convince women to buy its products by bringing out the cookie-cutter models (the skinny, pretty ones) as "proof of concept" with the goal of getting women to wish they looked like her.
- Or Dove could celebrate the insight that beauty does not come from a bottle, but comes from within. And, along the way, hopefully build affinity for the Dove brand as a champion of real beauty.
Toni & Guy, judging from the banner ad on the New York Magazine site, chose the former, yet gets no negative press from Ms. Thomas.
Dove chose the latter and their efforts are proclaimed "garbage."
Inspiration takes guts.
Do Thomas and Lange have any idea just how gutsy it was for Dove - a CPG brand who "is in the business of convincing you to buy their products" - to take such an indirect approach to advertising? It would have been a far less risky strategy to follow convention and put the attributes of the Dove products out there dressed to the nines with impossibly thin, cliched models, and call it an ad.
Instead, Dove, as they did with their "Sketches" film a couple years ago, continues to take the higher and harder road because they apparently believe that a brand can and should inspire its customers with its advertising budget.
Garbage? Really?
But the women were tricked!
Yes, women were tricked into thinking the patch had some active ingredient, only to discover later that their increased perception of beauty came from nowhere but within themselves.
Oh, the horrors.
Well, welcome to the land of reality pranks (or prankvertising, as some call them), where the whole point is tricking people and filming their reactions. Warning to those critics, do not watch the following:
- LG HDTV "Asteroid" - interviewees tricked into thinking an asteroid had hit earth
- Carlsberg Beer "Friends" - friends trick friends into helping them out under extreme conditions
- Samsung "Stare Down" - people are told if they simply stare at a phone for an hour they'll win one, but then are tricked with all kinds of distractions
- Nivea "Stress Test" - people are tricked into thinking they are wanted by police
- WestJet "Christmas Miracle" - people at an airport gate are tricked into thinking an interactive Santa display was just another way for kids to tell Santa what they wanted for Christmas, only to discover when they landed in another city, they got what they wanted
- The Devil's Due "Devil Baby" - people on the street are tricked by what looks like a baby carriage with no parents only to get close and see a "Devil Baby" pop out and scare them
I'm sure there are countless others, some of which are far more cruel than a placebo patch helping women see their real beauty within. But my point is, that's the genre. Trick people, film it, and you've got some compelling branded content. If you don't like it, don't hate Dove, hate the genre of Reality Pranks in general.
But I'm not a woman.
I am not a woman, nor the target of the Dove campaign in any shape or form. I get it. But I do pay attention to marketing. It's what I do for a living. And when I see a brand scorned for trying to leave the world a better place through its advertising, I feel compelled to make things right.
Would the critics have preferred that Dove stick to the tried-and-true cliches that objectify women and, worse, further the "ideal" image of women that is utterly unattainable?
Brands like Dove who place a marketing bet on human inspiration will be rewarded when they do it well, despite the scorn. Which is great because, in case you didn't read the The Ethical Nag post, Dove is in the business of selling products.
UPDATE: Since the original posting, I have fixed the misattributions of quotes to Carolyn Thomas and Maggie Lange.
