GLOBAL, APRIL 22, 2013 – Just hours after Dove’s new “Real Beauty” campaign was released, social networking sites were flooded by posts, mostly by women, saying how much Dove’s new campaign touched them.
The online video shows women being sketched by former forensic sketcher Gil Zamora based on the descriptions they provide of themselves. Someone else does the same thing but for the woman who has just described herself. The two images are then displayed next to each other, showing that the differences between them are vast. The first portrait shows an unattractive face while the second shows a more attracted version of the same woman. What moves most viewers of the now widely-viral video are the women’s reactions as they examine the two images, which can only be described as heartbreaking. The ad’s tagline is: “You are more beautiful than you think!”
Commentators are split between praising the ad for being a vehicle of encouragement for women everywhere and criticizing the ad for emphasizing how insecure most women are with their looks. Furthermore, bloggers’ comments branch out into different sub-arguments from the commercial featuring only mostly white women while women of other races are shown only for a few second to the brands hypocrisy. This is most notably pointed out by Charlotte Hannah on Twirlit.com who said:
“[Dove’s] long-running Real Beauty campaign has shed light on some important truths about the media’s unrealistic portrayals of women, but given the fact that Dove is owned by Unilever, which also owns Axe (ugh) and the company that produces Fair & Lovely skin lightening cream (double ugh), the campaign comes across as hypocritical and patronizing—a way for the company to pander to women for sales while practicing the very evil it preaches against.”
Ogilvy Brazil is the creative shop responsible behind the success of the campaign. It has been shared over 40,000 times on Facebook and the YouTube video hitting 17,411,509 views at the time of this writing. And since the campaign’s release exactly a week ago, a parody video for men has already been created.
Critics aside, it still generated conversation and engagement among viewers, which is the real point behind every campaign.
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