Creating Real Beauty

July 7th, 2008 at 11:05am Cindy Harris

Dove was lauded for its Campaign for Real Beauty when it launched four years ago with ads featuring curvy women in white underwear and an education campaign about the media’s manipulation of women and our perception of what “real beauty is.”

But as the New York Times reports today, the company now faces sagging public reception of the charitable aspects of the campaign (the ads often outshine the community service benefit of the program) and reputation-management issues (Dove corporate parent Unilever won’t disclose the exact percentage of sales that support the outreach programs targeted to young girls and women).

Solution? A new ad campaign, of course.

These new ads (see them here at Dove’s corporate site) make the connection between purchasing a Dove product and supporting the education of young girls about their real beauty crystal clear:

The commercial opens with a young girl being bombarded by media images of perfect women and then goes on to show the girl in a class about building self-esteem and that she pledges to see herself as “beautiful.”  The spot closes with screens that talk about how many girls have been reached by the “Campaign for Real Beauty” and then declare the following:

Entry Filed under: Media Buying, Creative, Messaging, Traditional advertising