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A bold ad campaign celebrating Real Beauty
Highlights
Since its inception, television is known to be the most effective medium for advertising and this is evident from the fact that most companies in the Fortune 500 list have had numerous TV slots on their name before they got famous. And the oldest and dominant advertisers have been the soaps always.
While most ads are busy creating and spreading stereotypes, a few challenge your perceptions and insist on changing your Perspectives
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Since its inception, television is known to be the most effective medium for advertising and this is evident from the fact that most companies in the Fortune 500 list have had numerous TV slots on their name before they got famous. And the oldest and dominant advertisers have been the soaps always.
This is also the reason that serial dramas on TV got the name ‘Soap Opera’. These ads have been there since long and have been persuading consumers (especially women) to buy them by boasting about its features. The frequency and number of these ads must have changed since its inception but the way these ads convey message and their content hasn’t noticed a revolution since long.
Most of these ads show a beautiful, ideal, fair woman or women who uses the sponsor-identified soap. Be it for pimples, acne or fairness, most soap brands have had the same old redundant way of advertising. And an ad that doesn’t make a person think, doesn’t try to alter his mindset is an incomplete ad.
But it is not that every soap brand has the same old, dull advertising; Dove’s campaign- ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’ has tried to change the way people’s notions on being beautiful, because beautiful is not just tall, zero size figure with a charming fair tone, it is more than that.
Although the campaign didn’t originate in India, it won much praise and applause here. It had started off in 2004 with a survey, which showed that only 23 per cent of women felt that they were responsible for influencing their own definition of beauty. After the survey, the campaign had billboards requesting motorists to vote if the women pictured were ‘fat or fit?’ or ‘wrinkled or wonderful?’
The poll results showed that 52 per cent voted for fat while 49 per cent voted for fit. The results triggered questions among public and engaged them in a dialogue with fellow beings, allowing them to introspect on their perspectives of beautiful. The campaign received an active response through the digital media, which acted as a forum for feedback and a platform for spreading the campaign’s messages worldwide.
The brave, bold and perceptive campaign by Dove appealed women to look at what characteristics already made them beautiful. Just like other major successful campaigns, the creative head behind this one was also Ogilvy and Mather. Ten years later, a Dove survey showed that close to 65 per cent women felt that they were responsible in influencing their own definition of beauty, which is nearly three times.
And to people who argue Unilever’s stand in this campaign saying that how can it have the campaign’s side while selling beauty products from Axe featuring men chasing model-like women, Unilever has a classic answer- It’s all about building confidence in men and women alike.
And it should be noted that Unilever’s Axe is advertised by other agencies and not Ogilvy and Mather. In today’s world where redundant ads are busy creating stereotypes, there is a dire need of more ads which provoke public’s thought and trigger a revolution, breaking the stereotypes.
By:Tushar Kalawatia
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