Washington - After years of encouraging women to love their bodies, Dove
set out to give its plastic bottles a makeover. The idea: "Just like
women, we wanted to show that our iconic bottle can come in all shapes and
sizes, too," the company said on its website.
After just hours of its new advertising campaign, it seems
indignation comes in all shapes and sizes, too.
The six shapely bottles which include curvy, slender and
pear-shaped varieties have attracted ridicule from all corners. "Dove
ruined its body image," the Atlantic
declared." "Dove is running out of ideas,” added the women's site
Jezebel.
Consumers were quick to weigh in on social media, too:
"Like, I just want to [use] my body wash, not be reminded that I'm pear
shaped," a woman named Julie Daniel tweeted. "Women don't need to be
categorized all the time."
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So exactly where did Dove a long-time darling of the
advertising world go wrong?
For starters, advertising professors say, the revamped
bottles seem more tongue-in-cheek than they do a sincere way of celebrating
women's bodies. And, they said, there is a difference between feeling
comfortable in your body and being unnecessarily prodded to make buying
decisions based on your body's contours.
"It's straight-up off-brand," said Samantha Skey,
president of digital media company She Knows Media.
"It's a change in tone
for Dove, from ads that are almost painfully sincere and earnest, to something
that could literally be a 'Saturday Night Live' skit. Unless you're trying to
mock everything you stand for, I'm not sure why you would do this."Dove and its parent company, Unilever, did not respond to
requests for comment.
The 46-second ad begins with a simple tagline: "Beauty
comes in all shapes and sizes." The camera pans to a factory where
machines are churning out a number of bottles. "It's time now to bring out
the pretty people," a man's voice says, "and I d-double-dare you to
find the prettier of the ladies here." Upbeat music plays as each of the
bottles makes its way down an assembly line. "Beauty comes in all shapes
and sizes," the ads say again.
Executives at Ogilvy & Mather London, the advertising
firm behind the campaign, called it "one of those rare ideas which
condense decades of a brand's legacy in two seconds.” It’s deceivingly simple
and quite nuanced," Andre Laurentino, an executive creative director for
Ogilvy, said in a statement. "A message about our body conveyed by Dove
bottles themselves, it brings brand essence and product design seamlessly
together."
But not everybody seemed to agree."Seems like a really
stupid idea to remind people how their body shape doesn't fit a culturally
ideal body shape," Patrick Vargas, an advertising professor at the University of Illinois, wrote in an email. "In
the shower, no less! Who would want a consumer product that's shaped like
[them] self?"
Consumer surveys show that shoppers choose soaps and body
washes based number of factors, including scent, quality and affordability. And
while packaging certainly plays a role in how a product is perceived, many said
Dove's campaign seemed to miss the point.
"When you're shopping, you're not going to say, 'Oh,
wow, I'm going to buy this one because it has a pear shape just like me,'"
said Angeline Close Scheinbaum, an advertising professor at the University of Texas
at Austin who
studies consumer psychology. "It doesn't seem like this was a woman's
idea."
"Are we selling high-level ideas here, or are we
selling a product that's supposed to clean your skin?" she added.
"Dove has drifted from its roots and has potentially gone too far."
For more than a decade, Dove's 'real beauty' campaign has
been hailed as an example of socially-conscious advertising. Back in 2004,
after market research found that only 4 percent of women thought of themselves
as "beautiful," Dove began filling its billboards and television ads
with "real" women of all colors, shapes and sizes.
A number of ads and online video followed, including a 2013
spot in which forensic artists drew women based on their own descriptions of
themselves, and again based on a stranger's descriptions. The message:
"You are more beautiful than you think."
"Dove has done great things, and it's really changed
advertising," Skey said.
"They took a massive risk to fully pivot their brand
toward a social message, and they understood and brought to life the impact of
advertising on women's and girls' self-esteem." That, she added, is why
this blunder is particularly interesting. Another brand -- one with a more
playful image, perhaps could have pulled off the body-shaped bottles, she said.
"If this were a different brand that hadn't done such
beautiful, consistent work, nobody would've cared," she said. "But
for Dove to equate plastic bottles to a woman's body how that could be
perceived as good idea, I don't know."Instead, Dove is left doing damage control.
But, Skey and others said, this slip-up isn't likely to
cause much long-term damage to the brand. As Skey put it: "This kind of
brand fail, they happen to everybody. You can only have a winning strategy for
so long before you push it too far."
WASHINGTON POST