Mar 13th, 2007
7 Branding lessons from the Dove campaign
I read a Seth Godin piece recently that challenged advertisers to behave more ethically - advertising as a whole isn’t always something to be proud of, and let’s face it, the core tenets of advertising haven’t really changed much since people realized that brand comfort (I think I just invented that term) was the most important factor - being exposed to a brand enough that you feel comfortable picking it up in the store. So advertising has become lots of flashy ads that do silly things & then show the product.
By listening to the consumers they tell you that only 2% of women are prepared to call themselves beautiful, you can become a force for social change and produce memorable, meaningful, and perhaps even important ads.
After all, the Dove campaign for real beauty is a great example of marketing that works with contemporary culture, not against it. Dove was prepared to capture the tremendous energy coming off a trend that many brands just looked through or tried to work around. In point of fact, ideas of femaleness had been “under review” and deeply contested in our society at least since the ideas of Susan B. Anthony. The tide had come and gone several times by 2003 and now it appeared to be prepared to transform our culture’s most fundamental ideas of what beauty is.
Read: This Blog Sits at the: 7 Branding lessons from the Dove campaign