And so that is that. After the endless hype and acres of PR that it generated, what industry people had predicted was correct. The Dove “Real Beauty” campaign failed to shift product. Unilever have announced that they will be now be focusing on “product superiority” and have actually put the global task of generating a new campaign for the key Dove Bar to pitch.
The fundamental problem with the Dove “Real Beauty” approach, which I have written about before, is that while it was fantastic that the brand had found a brand belief that would resonate they never found a way to link it to products. It also suffered from a credibility issue, as at the same time as they hailed beauty in all shapes and sizes they were selling beauty products. Products that promised to improve what you have.
I always thought that the key concept behind celebrating beauty in all shapes and sizes was interesting, but they could have done that and actually celebrated all beauty – including the most beautiful and aspirational instead of getting more and more bizarre and limited. They also absolutely needed to link to products and product superiority. In the studies and work I have done to date I have not found a product that was not seen and perceived as superior that had a strong emotional bond. By forgetting this and focusing on the hype they missed the fundamental fact that consumers buy products to work. This is especially true in beauty care where people buy hope in a bottle as much as the physical results.
At the time the “Real Beauty” campaign broke, many people within the beauty area, myself included, felt that it would not work as it missed some of the fundamentals in consumer understanding and category understanding. It seems that this is also Unilever’s conclusion as sales have just not materialized to the degree they should have.
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