Besides all of the negative impacts of advertising on society, there are also companies that take a responsible approach towards society in their marketing and advertising campaigns. Furthermore, they are able to deliver their message successfully. One of them is Dove and their campaign called Dove Real Beauty Campaign.
(superpalas, 2019)
This ad is depicting a forensic artist FBI, Gil Zamora. He is sketching several women of different ages and ethnicities that he is not seeing because the women are sitting behind a portable wall and answering the artist’s questions. The women are describing themselves while the artist is drawing them. He also says something like, “Tell me about your chin.” Then the woman answers, “It protrudes a little bit, especially when I smile.” Another woman replies, “My mom told me I had a big jaw.” As the next, strangers sitting behind the portable wall and describe the same women to the artist (Dove US, 2013).
Finally, there were always two sketches of one woman. One of them is depicting the women based on her own descriptions, and the second one is showing her, too, but according to strangers’ descriptions. The sketches based on the strangers’ descriptions were more attractive than the sketches made by the self-description of women (Dove US, 2013).
(Dove US, 2013)
According to the differences between two versions of sketches, there was conclude that women are too critical about their physical appearances. Globally, only 4% of women feel good about themselves, in accordance with statistics. The aim of this campaign was to “do something that would move the other 96%,” (Grose, 2013) i.e. to make women feel better about themselves.
(Kerri, 2013)
This campaign has gone viral because a high level of emotionality and trust in it. Many people, both women and men, were even crying when they have seen it. The video, approximately one week after posting on YouTube, reached over 8.6 million views. One month later, the same video has got more than 114 million total views. The campaign was perceived very positively by media, such as the New York Times, ABC News and others. Their commentaries were heavily shared almost 40,000 times on Facebook. On the other hand, there were some critical voices saying that “their definition of beauty is too narrow,” (Grose, 2013).
References:
Dove US. (2013, April 14). Dove Real Beauty Sketches | You’re more beautiful than you think (3mins). [Video file]. Retrieved from https://youtu.be/XpaOjMXyJGk
Grose, J. (2013, April 19). The Story Behind Dove’s Mega Viral “Real Beauty Sketches” Campaign. Retrieved from https://www.fastcompany.com/1682823/the-story-behind-doves-mega-viral-real-beauty-sketches-campaign
Kerri. (2013, August 27). DOVE "Real Beauty Sketches.". [digital image]. Retrieved from https://www.beautybulletin.com/images/easyblog_images/948/b2ap3_large_Dove-real-beauty-sketches.jpg
superpalas. (2019, February 26). Dove’s Real Beauty Sketches. [digital image]. Retrieved from https://4ntwrksmcr.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/screen-shot-2015-05-18-at-12-21-18-am1.png
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