Case Study 2: Dove: Engaging Customers by Delivering Meaningful Content through Advertising Unilever is a British-Dutch multinational company whose products include beverages, food, cleaning agents and personal care products. The world's third-largest consumer goods company, Unilever owns over 400 brands, but mainly focuses on certain key brands like Axe/Lynx, Omo, Knorr, Magnum, and Dove, with total sales of over E1 billion (about $1.1 billion). Dove is a personal care brand, and products include antiperspirants and deodorants, body washes, beauty bars, lotions and moisturizers, hair care, and facial care products. The products are manufactured in several countries, including Argentina, China, Germany, India, and South Africa, and are sold in more than 80 countries. In 2004, Dove was looking for a way to revive its brand as it was lacking differentiation and a distinct value add, and was seen by many customers as mainly a commodity. In order to better connect with their (potential) customers, Unilever first conducted a global study involving more than 3,000 women in 10 different countries to learn about women's priorities, interests, and perceptions about beauty in general and about themselves. The study revealed that 72 percent of women rate their beauty and 69 percent rate their physical attractiveness "average." Moreover, only 57 percent of women worldwide are somewhat or very satisfied with their body weight and shape, and merely 2 percent of the women actually described themselves as "beautiful." Unilever executives saw an opportunity to set the brand apart via a distinct and completely different value proposition compared to its competitors. Instead of following the traditional mantra of beauty-marketing campaigns, which promote an unattainable standard of attractiveness as the norm, Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty has taken a stand against an issue that affects the lives of millions of women: self-perception in the face of advertisements that don't reflect the reality of women's appearances. The campaign, which was created by the ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, tied into a global dialog about the need for a wider definition of beauty. The first stage of this campaign kicked off in September 2004 with a series of billboard advertisements. The selected spots showcased photographs featuring women whose appearances are outside the stereotypical norms of beauty. The ads asked viewers to judge the women and invited them to cast their votes, with the results dynamically updated and displayed on the billboard itself. Simultaneously, on its Web sites around the world, the company no longer focused on its products but on its new value proposition and the brand's corresponding mission to make more women feel beautiful every day by widening the definition of beauty. Partly sunnyAfter receiving initial significant media coverage, the campaign expanded into other media in June 2005, with a series of television spots and print advertisements called "Tested on Real Curves." This phase of the campaign was created to debunk the stereotype that only thin is beautiful. The highlight was the 2006 Little Girls global campaign in February, for which Unilever purchased a 30-second spot in the commercial break during Super Bowl XL. Set to Cyndi Lauper singing "True Colors," the ad featured girls from a number of ethnic backgrounds who wished they looked different. The spot calls on the public to support young girls in their unique sense of beauty and then fades into "The Dove Self-Esteem Fund," which was created to educate and inspire girls to build self-esteem, become empowered women, and understand a wider definition of beauty. In the same year, after Spain banned overly thin models from its runways, Dove responded on YouTube with a compelling short film, Evolution, depicting the transformation of a real woman into a model and promoting awareness of how unrealistic perceptions of beauty are created. The spot has gained more than 18 million views to date and won two Cannes Lions Grand Prix awards. Phase 3 of the campaign was launched in February 2007 and stems from the Dove global study, Beauty Comes of Age, which revealed that 91 percent of women aged 50-64 believe it is time for society to change its views about women and aging. The company launched Dove Pro-Age and promoted it in a TV commercial that contained images of "real" women aged 50 and over, literally uncovering all of their age spots, grey hair, and curves. The spot finishes with the statement that this ad is not meant to promote anti-aging but Dove's Pro-Age. In the same year, Dove produced the film Onslaught, which featured a young girl who is bombarded by fictionalized images, video clips, product shots, and advertisements, all illustrating the impossible standards of beauty in modern media. Dove's next big move hit global audiences in 2013 when they commissioned an FBI-trained sketch artist to star in its spot Dove Real Beauty Sketches. He was asked to draw women based on how they see themselves. Then, the artist drew the same women again based on the description of others. The sketches were shown side- by-side to the subjects, showing that the women are clearly their own harshest critics, which culminates in the message that women are more beautiful than they think. This film received 163 million global views and won the Titanium Grand Prix at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. According to Unilever, this is the most watched online ad ever. In the most recent blockbuster of the campaign, titled Selfie, which was displayed at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014, a photographer teaches high-school girls and their mothers to boost their confidence and expand their views of what beauty is by taking self-portraits with their phones and posting them on social media. The global results of the campaign have been remarkable, and it continues to pay dividends. It won dozens of ad awards and created major media buzz. It has also, of course, boosted sales of Dove, 27'C Partly sun+ Page view A Read aloud [T) Add text \\ Draw and it continues to pay dividends. It won dozens of ad awards and created major media buzz. It has also, of course, boosted sales of Dove. What has made these campaigns so successful? Dove went beyond just rebranding. Instead of just communicating the functions and value-add of its products, the company successfully and consistently delivered an emotional benefit and a unique value-set. Unilever was creating something inspiring and aligned it with their brand in a compelling way. In their ad campaign, Dove chose not to sell a bar of soap to women but the notion of how to feel beautiful and comfortable in their own skin. The campaign also serves as evidence for understanding the perspectives and mentalities of consumers, as well as the benefit in taking a stance to better people's lives beyond the direct product. But has the campaign really changed perceptions of beauty? Dove claims it has; research by Harvard psychologist Nancy Etcoff that examined the campaign found that more women today define beauty on a wider array of qualities beyond looks-confidence, for instance. Dove had their finger on the pulse of their consumers and acted at the right moment to respond to a customer base that was tired of being made to feel less than they are so that a company couldsell their beauty products. More than that, it became a trendsetter and a breath of fresh air in the beauty industry. Source: Kotler, P., Armstrong, G., Opresnik, M. O. (2017). Marketing: An Introduction (13th ed. Global ed.). Pearson Education.(40 marks) Question 2: What strategies described in the case could be enhanced or excluded to engage with customers more effectively? (20 marks)