Most people in the North American marketing world knew it was coming. The new Dove video Onslaught had been heralded in the industry press for several weeks. Within a couple of days of its release, the video has been posted on YouTube multiple times and the discussion is beginning to heat up. The question everyone seems to be asking is, will Onslaught repeat the success of Evolution? (Click here to read previous post.)

Evolution, which depicts the artificial enhancement that goes into creating a beauty billboard, has received more than 15 million views online, created tons of buzz and won the Film Lion at Cannes (a good job someone thought to air it on TV at least once).

For those of you who have not yet seen the new video, I’ll briefly describe it. It opens with a shot of a young girl, smiling confidently at the camera, accompanied by the tune “Here it comes” from U.K. group Simian’s “La Breeze.” After 15 seconds, it cuts to a barrage of traditional beauty industry images, perhaps intended to approximate the number of exposures the girl is likely to receive in the coming year. A sequence of presenters make promises: “You will look … younger … smaller … lighter … firmer … tighter … thinner … softer.” The ad closes with the tagline: “Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.”

While many are focused on whether the new video will out-gun Evolution in creating buzz, to me the really interesting question is what Dove it trying to achieve by taking on the beauty industry in such a direct fashion. After all, it is a beauty care brand, right? The brand is clearly trying to become the rallying point for people who are concerned about the blatant stereotyping presented by the beauty industry and the negative effects that it might have on young girls. In doing so, is Dove trying to follow Douglas Holt’s recipe for an iconic brand? And, if so, will it help them break the mould or box them in?

In his book How Brands Become Icons, Holt proposes that iconic brands address acute contradictions in society, such as Coca-Cola tapping into the tensions in the United States during the Vietnam war by creating the “Hilltop” ad which launched the song, “I’d like to teach the world to sing.”

The inability to live up to the perfect images presented by the beauty industry may create just the sort of tension that Holt had in mind. The Dove web site suggests that only 2 percent of women consider themselves beautiful and 68 percent strongly agree that the media sets an unrealistic standard of beauty. Quoted in AdAge this week, Kathy O’Brien, marketing director for Dove skin care in the U.S., said that Onslaught “does show our commitment to our mission, and we think it does have a positive effect on the brand. We feel a responsibility as a billion-dollar brand in the beauty industry … to change the way beauty industry communicates with young girls.” She further noted that other companies were beginning to follow Dove’s lead in presenting realistic beauty in their advertising.

But how pervasive, really, is the tension that Dove is trying to address? Is it something that affects all women, or is it a segmented concern? It seems to me that there are still plenty of women who enthusiastically buy into the image of beauty portrayed in ads. Women like these are going to dismiss Dove’s positioning as irrelevant. Others, however, do see the beauty industry image as manipulative, and to them Dove’s stance should be appealing, provided that Dove can truly separate itself from the pack. As the Dove brand has gone from strength to strength over the last few years, it seems that if the appeal of its message is segmenting, the segment is a pretty large and motivated one.

Since I am clearly not in the target market, I went to BlogPulse to check the reaction to the new video. I found a strong uptick in commentary about Onslaught, usually accompanied by references to Evolution as well. Here are some examples:

I have to admit that Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty is quite fabulous. And the new video Onslaught from its Self-Esteem fund is visually impactful with a message that is loud and clear. Media and business should not be setting the standard for beauty. We owe it to ourselves and this next generation of girls to help them understand they are more than their physical appearance.” (Click here for full entry.)

This is hands-down the best thing I’ve seen on the Internet today. It’s Onslaught, Dove’s follow-up film to the almost-as-awesome Evolution. Check it out, and then let your daughter(s) check it out. Then go to the Campaign for Real Beauty website and check that out, too. Then post the video on your blog if you have one. It’s that compelling.
 (Click here for blog.)

This video gives me goosebumps every time I watch it. It’s such a cry to change–I love trendsetters. (Click here for blog.)

So is there any evidence of segmentation? Given that bloggers themselves are only a small segment of society, it is tough to tell. But I have a sneaking suspicion that many of the women commenting on the video would fall into the audience for sites like Momsspeakup which announces in “About Us” that “We are women, parents, consumers, voters and much, much more and we’re fed up with the ‘business as usual’ attitude of politicians & greedy corporations.”

A vocal and obvious segment is the group of activist (and often male) commentators who do not buy into the altruistic nature of Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty. The comments come from YouTube.

Dude - wtf, this comes from a company that makes everything, not all their products are so “high esteem” what a load of hypocritical crap By the way one of teh hundreds of brands it makes is SLIM FAST!!! what a crock

I think it’s hilarious that Dove’s parent company (Unilever) is also the parent company of Axe deodorant… Yeah that’s the beauty of advertising : to sell a product you’ll promote a message, a “cause”, and to sell another product, you’ll promote a totally opposed message !

If nothing else, these comments point to the difficulty of managing a widely varied brand portfolio in an age where corporate information is readily available. It is easy to see how a green positioning might be adopted across multiple brands. It is tough to see how Dove’s anti-establishment positioning can be. In all probability, the reactions of cynics like these will probably go unheard and the Campaign for Real Beauty seems set to gain even more traction.

So will Onslaught continue the success of Little Girls and Evolution? Will it cause Dove to divide or conquer? Please let us know your thoughts.

Tags: Millward Brown, Nigel Hollis, Onslaught, Dove, Campaign For Real Beauty, beauty

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 4th, 2007 at 3:43 pm and is filed under Brands, Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. Print this Page