*Each Monday, Prophet’s Chief Curator and Provocateur, Andy Stefanovich, or a member of our innovation team* shares a Monday on-ramp with Prophet employees across the globe. We’ll begin sharing them here, and encourage you to join the conversation by answering questions and providing your own comments below. Happy Monday!
Launched in 1957, Unilever’s Dove Beauty Bar and its messaging have been constant: It’s not soap. It’s a beauty bar. The picture of moisturizing cream pouring into a bar of soap was the iconic image Dove used in ads for nearly five decades. In 2002 Unilever downsized its total family of brands from 1,200 to 400choosing Dove as a master brand.
To support Dove as a master brand, Unilever shifted the product’s frame of reference from the single-minded moisturizing soap / beauty bar to a purpose driven approach based on each person’s inner beauty. Dove’s new brand positioning: “Real beauty can only be found on the inside and every woman deserves to feel beautiful.”
The company launched the marketing program “Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty” – a challenge to unrealistic beauty standards portrayed in popular media. Dove portrays “real beauty” in its messaging with women who do not have “runway model” on their resumes, instead, “they are the women passing by in grocery aisles or sitting in the office next door.”
The campaign has helped the brand stake a visible and credible claim beyond soap, and into a territory that personal care products do not need to revolve around the dated images of beauty that dominate the category. The shift has allowed the brand to extend to products beyond soap to include bodywash, handwash, deodorant, face care, hair care, tools (cleansing massagers), body lotion - even a series of esteem workshops for young girls.
A commissioned report on self esteem found the “majority of young girls (seven in ten) feel they do not measure up in some way including their looks, performance in school and relationships. Most disturbing is that girls with low self-esteem are engaging in harmful and destructive behavior that can leave a lasting imprint on their lives.”
Under the “real beauty” territory, the Dove brand created a series of workshops designed to educate and inspire young girls around positive self esteem. Dove’s “Self-Esteem Fund” focuses on helping protect and nurture positive body-related self-esteem and has already reached 2 million girls and conducted nearly 2,700 educational self-esteem workshops. Imagine a moisturizing bar trying to do that.
*This week’s on-ramp was brought to you by Geof Hammond in our Richmond office.
