Evaluation Of Dove’s Public Relations Campaign For Real Beauty
Before Dove, CSR was a marketing cause to get consumers interested in the products or goods that a company was providing. It meant expressing concern for the environment, forming an alliance with non-profit or donating money to a charity. However, Dove didn’t connect their brand name with a charity or a cause. Instead they created a deeper connection with women on a personal level. Dove tapped into an intense emotional issue for women worldwide, they chose to raise awareness to a conflict that they felt women dealt with on a daily basis – feeling beautiful in the face of thinly represented ideals of beauty as shown in the media.
Dove brought CSR back to what it was originally intended to stand for. CSR was envisioned not simply as a way to conceal a scandal or give back after a natural disaster, it was created to reinforce positive change in the eyes of the consumer. For a public relations campaign to meet its objectives and be successful it must be able to identify its stakeholders, categorize and prioritize them. There are varying views on how the term stakeholders and publics are defined. For some the terms are inseparable, while for others there is a difference in that publics arise on their own and are not the original intended audience of a certain campaign while stakeholders are those chosen by the organisation. But whatever the exact definition, it is clear that when a large, multinational company like Dove embarks on a public relations campaign there will be vast array of entities that are affected by it, and also entities that that affect the campaign itself and which the campaign must negotiate with and adapt in order to new situations. According to Grunig and Repper, the identification of publics provides more specific information about the publics communication needs. In essence what is being stated here is that not all stakeholders should be treated the same, communicatively speaking. Publics vary in how they receive information. Some publics are proactive and reactive while others are passive consumers of information. It is the latter that Dove really strove to communicate with in this campaign. Dove saw an opportunity to communicate with normal, everyday women outside the realm of academia, politics etc.
By highlighting this key stakeholder dove created an environment that established good relations by conducting a campaign of inclusivity and effective communicative flow. From perspective of Dove, the main stakeholders of this campaign are women, of varying ages. In the beginning of the campaign it was mainly focused of young adult and middle aged women, but then began to give additional attention to young girls aged 14-18 during the second phase. Early reports and studies conducted by Dove gave clear indication that the interest would be reciprocated. This reporting enabled Dove to realise that they needed to address women in a compelling manner and create an environment in which to listen to them and also communicate to them. Media is used here not only in the sense of news channels, newspapers etc. but also the media surrounding the fashion Industry such as magazines, websites, talk shows, articles and publications, particularly in the United States. Dove addresses the media by interacting with events such as the Oscars and the Super bowl to gain exposure and meet their communication objectives. It also at times criticises media openly. Dove addressed it competitors often in an indirect manner.
An example would Victoria’s Secret Models campaigns being criticised in the wake of Doves Campaign for Real Beauty. As far as employee or internal stakeholders are concerned, little could be found during the research of this case study to indicate that Dove considered this aspect a major stakeholder that the public relations campaign needed to contend with. Of interest however was the fact that one of the models used during the early advertisement stage was Tabatha Roman, who worked on the Unilever business for Ogilvy, an employee with Unilever. This indicates that perhaps some form of internal initiatives or communication activities t may have been implemented that made employees an inclusive part of the public relations campaign. Whether this indicated a direct problem that needed to be addressed by the campaign is unknown. Public relations activities such as employee participation in public campaigns would certainly have a positive impact on an organisations I internal structure by fostering morale through a sense of inclusivity with its employee. Other stakeholders addressed include, Universities, Charities and Organisation such as the Girls Scouts of America, Contracted workers such as photographers. Stakeholders that may have not been account for or addressed are environmental organisations such as Greenpeace that ridiculed Dove and its parent company Unilever for its use of palm tree oil. One of the main objectives of any public relations campaign is attaining legitimacy of an entity’s actions through various outlets of communications such as those found in the mass media.
Perceptions and reactions found in unearned media is a major indicator in the overall objective of a campaign. By gauging and interpreting the perceptions held by certain stakeholders an organisation is able to determine if the campaigns objectives are aligned. Analysis of earned media is hugely important in surveying the social environment of an organisations campaign and can help direct the activities of their PR in line with overall strategy. Mass media can be seen as the main stakeholder that any public relations campaign such as Doves must deal with and pay great attention to. As opposed to paid advertising with which may only focus on main stakeholders (e. g. the consumer) in controlled form, PR must tend to situations and criticisms that result from marketing and advertising, while also capitalising on earned exposure and trends that follow. An advantage we can see from this public relations campaign is that Dove is an established brand. Recognised brands have more leverage than unknown ones as they contain symbols and slogans in conjunction with an accumulation of experiences with products or services that make it an established name amongst its stake holders. In this sense Dove had the brand recognition to ensure it would be noticed by mass media, and effectively communicated its message through paid media, but most importantly received substantial earned media in the form of the conversation that their campaign had sparked. In 2004 when the campaign launched, Dove distributed advertisements in the form of billboards and asked viewers to judge the women’s looks in the ad.
The public were then invited to cast their votes on the website campaignforrealbeauty. com. With the voting process Dove was able to simultaneously able to measure their outreach and also gain qualitative data on how their advertisements were being perceived. The publics’ feedback helped them survey their campaign while it was in the beginning stages. In 2005 Dove then kicked off the second iconic phase featuring real woman whose appearances were unlike any of the beauty stereotypes seen in media. This showed women whose appearances were unlike any of the beauty stereotypes seen in the media. Once again this drove thousands of women to their website and enabled constant feedback from their target audience and a major stakeholder. Through the next few years of the campaign different advertisements emerged throughout the media such as a short film called ‘Evolution’ which showed the transformation of a real woman into a model. It promoted awareness of how unrealistic perceptions of beauty are created. Dove also showed an advertisement aimed at young girls during Super Bowl 2006 that garnered much attention and praise. This early stage of the marketing campaign drew great praise from many in the media. The women were seen as relatable to the targeted audience. The success of the advertising campaign is clear from the exposure it attained. Models from the ads appeared on US talk shows including Good Morning America, The View, Ellen and The Oprah Winfrey Show. The campaign also received numerous awards for a short film ‘Evolution’ including AdAge’s creativity grand prize 2007 and two Cannes Film Festival awards. The video was also the most viewed video on YouTube for October 2007. The results of this mass media exposure drove millions to participate online and foster an online community that was supportive in its nature, again aligned with the campaigns communication objectives.
People trust publicity more because the brand isn’t controlling the message. One of the reasons the campaign was successful in the beginning was the ability to capitalise on events elsewhere. On the back of a media storm in Spain, where underweight models were turned away at the Madrid Fashion festival, Dove rolled out the second phase of its Real Beauty campaign with the launch of commercial advertising mainly in the form of television advertising, that was more focused on criticising the traditional standards of beauty that was often seen in the media at the time. The campaign was also altered to be more inclusive of younger stakeholders; particularly girls aged 14-17. While not earned media in the strict sense, the dove campaign effectively used a public and national discussion, such as the issue in Spain, to effectively springboard the next phase of the real beauty campaign. While already making effective use of YouTube, In October 2007 Dove announced its online social media presence with the launch of the Real Beauty Facebook page and later twitter. Social Media was the perfect format to espouse Doves sociably responsible message of female body perception and it immediately began to post motivational statuses, videos, images, tweets and information on its page. Facebook also ushered in a new dawn of integrated marketing that was simultaneously able to advertise, inform, educate and most importantly respond to and provide a forum of communication with its stakeholders. In a sense Facebook and Twitter allowed Dove to integrate the previously separate forms of communications of advertisement and online discussion, as mentioned previously, in a format that was not possible before. Dove joined Twitter in November 2009 and again used it instant and integrated platform to continue its campaign’s ‘two-way flow’ philosophy of communication. As well as being noted for responding to tweets in a quick manner they made effective use of the hashtag feature which allowed twitter user to share campaigns and trends set by the Dove team. One of the most popular and widely lauded of these hashtag uses was the #speakbeautiful handle.
In partnership with Twitter, Dove created an initiative that used the platforms algorithms to identify negative comments in tweets and in turn send out a positive message to the user. The speakbeautiful hashtag became an important movement in itself gaining particular momentum during the 2015 Oscars. These integrations took advantage of new media technologies such as YouTube, and Dove’s success, particularly with “Evolution”, can be accredited to its viral status on platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. The vast difference between the success of the expensive Super Bowl placement and the inexpensive YouTube integration not only proves the significance of social platforms at this time, but also Dove’s ability to successfully adapt to them. Talking about beauty was never going to be enough for a public relations brand of this scope. Imagery, it could be argued was everything. One of Doves very first initiative was a photography exhibit in Toronto called ‘Beyond Compare; Women Photographers on Real Beauty’ featuring work from over 67 female photographers that set out to challenge conceptions of female beauty. With the help of photographer Annie Leibowitz, Dove was then able to share powerful billboards that showcased women of different shapes and sizes to reinforce their message. These images were often created with tick boxes prompting the viewer to answer a certain question, which they were encouraged to do on the campaign website Dove’s PR campaign took on the task of changing beauty image, in the literal sense. Through an initiative called Image_hack, Dove sough to literally change the online results of images produced by internet search engines when people used certain tags or phrases. Knowing from its extensive global reports that women did not significantly identify with standards of beauty found in the media, Dove set about changing was seen on media. By using the Image_hack website, dove encouraged the public and indeed other advertising agencies to upload their own photos that then would be tagged with a phrase i. e. Beautiful. The Real Truth about Beauty Research, A global Report. - The driving force of this study was to gain a global understanding of woman, beauty, well-being and the relationship between these. Researchers Nancy Eckoff and colleagues saw that there was a growing concern of the portrayals of female beauty in popular culture helping to perpetuate unattainable or unauthentic beauty ideals. Researchers thought that these unrealistic ideals could also impact a woman’s well-being, happiness and self-esteem. Funded buy Unilever, rigorous academic research was conducted before the campaign even launched.
By using strategy 1 researcher firm in New York, quantitative data was gathered from 3200 woman from the ages of 18-64 in 10 different countries. Telephone interviews were conducted in the US, Canada, Great Britain, Italy, France, Portugal, Netherlands, Brazil, Argentina and Japan. 300 interviews were conducted in each country except for the US where 500 interviews were conducted. In Nancy Eckoff’s fore word she reasons that “The study does not suggest that women are self-loathing or in despair or mere victims. Far from it. But they do not feel the power and pride of beauty, either. Only the minority of women see themselves as above average in appearance, and only 2% claim to be beautiful”. With this study showing that only 2% of women feel that they are beautiful, Dove's campaign sees that there is an enormous amount of room for improvement. When the study was conducted Dove made the statement that they understand the relationship between woman and beauty is complex – it can be powerful and inspiring or it can be elusive and frustrating as well. Results of the study remarkably show that perceptions all over the world are relatively the same. The study deconstructed beauty ideals across the globe but also deepened what it is that will make a woman feel beautiful. More importantly it helped form the campaigns specific objectives, target audience and targeted messages to help change the perceptions of how women perceive beauty globally. It was a huge task but Doves preliminary in-depth research had a major impact in it becoming a well-marketed and distributed campaign with key figures that could be employed in public relations communications activities “Without having a foundation in the global research study, which showed that the image of beauty was unattainable, we wouldn’t have had the credibility in creating the materials, in pitching stories and being able to answer some of the folks that didn’t agree with the campaign”. As stated already in this case study a major facet of Dove campaign is Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). The nature of their campaign meant it was imperative that they employed Public Relations in such a manner that they could closely align morals and ethics to their best of their ability. Morals are our personal beliefs, whereas as ethics can be seen to shared community standards that a society agrees to. CSR so is a way of behaving that strongly draws on ethics to achieve trust and good reputation with organisations stakeholders. In the research of this case study, it would appear that the majority of the criticisms aimed at dove during this campaign on the basis of being unethical, were actually of personal moral grounds rather than unethical business or public relations practices.
Many people viewed there to be hypocrisy between the message espoused by Dove and messages from other brands such as Axe, also owned by Unilever. Also, Dove could have been accused of a form of ambush marketing or piggybacking when it chose to go ahead with the second phase of its campaign in the wake of the Spain model controversy. However, the fact that the Real Beauty campaign had been initiated 2 years previously meant it was clear of such accusations. Recently, other campaigned have been accused and condemned of that sort of business behaviour such as the Pepsi’s 2017 Advertisement featuring Kendall Jenner. Many saw the ad as Pepsi clearly taking advantage of Black Lives Matter protests which were taking place in several cities across the United States Any public relations campaign should be closely acquainted with crises communications. It is designs to protect and defend anyone facing a public challenge to its reputation. Measures should be undertaken when committing to a campaign such as training spokespersons and establishing monitoring systems. However even if certain measures are applied, things may not go an organisation’s way. The second part of crisis management must the focus on dealing with a crisis after it has occurred. A recent example of Dove committing to effect crisis communications was in the wake of short advertisement posted on it Facebook site 2017 that was deemed to be racist. However Dove with the issue as effectively as possibly by keeping in line with good public relations practices.
It followed the three pillars of crisis communications by
- Acknowledging the issue quickly and offering a sincere apology
- taking ownership and showing understanding of why it was deemed offensive and
- offering recourse and committing to changing protocols.
In 2008 Greenpeace posted a parody of one of Doves short films “Onslaught”, that aimed to create expose Dove as “a group of retailers, manufacturers and suppliers whose aim is create standards for the production of sustainable palm oil”, a fact which GreenPeace eschewed was contributing to deforestation and destruction of animals habitat. Again Dove and Unilevers response was swift and they ordered a halt to all importation of palm tree oil. Not only did they do this, but they also pressured the Indonesian Government into halting the exportation of product. This was an effective approach that kept the company in line with its communicative objectives of a sociably conscious organisation. The Dove Real Beauty was a successful campaign in achieving its objects in a physical and communicative sense. Overall, much of the campaign’s success can be attributed to it being the first digital campaign to drive participants to a supportive online community that reached over 200 million people worldwide, with over 26 million people participating in the campaign online. Dove committed to an unconventional campaign intended to provoke debate. Its mass-media exposure, particularly earned not paid, in combination with the use of national events such as the Super bowl proved hugely effective in realising the communicative objectives of its public relations efforts. One aspect of the dove campaign that is to be criticised is that it cited extensive worldwide earned media coverage, which was reported as adding up to a total media value of 82 million Euros. A use of advertising value equivalents (UAE’s) which are rejected as a valid measure of media coverage by most researchers and communication industry bodies.
