case study of dove soap
“I think Canada was just really ready for it,” says Aviva Groll, group account director at Ogilvy, who has worked on Dove since 2004. “There was a lot of support internally at Unilever, it struck a chord… [It was] a time of great experimentation and great leadership that allowed that to happen.” Groll also notes that having the budget available and co-operation amongst the product categories to allow for a campaign centred on the brand as a whole meant everything fell into place for a Canada-first launch.
What followed was unexpected buzz as the campaign gained traction around the world, becoming a major water cooler topic before the days of social media spreading ideas like wildfire. New Dove products were launched using the same creative idea – showing real women with different hair types, skin types and body types, loving themselves and their favourite Dove products, often in their underwear.
While the water cooler buzz and media attention escalated (Oprah had those underwear-clad women on her show), one of the most talked-about aspects of the campaign came as a complete surprise to MacLeod and her team – the viral power of striking the right chord.
By now, almost everyone has seen the “Evolution” video on YouTube (12 million people and counting), depicting a woman who gets transformed, through makeup and Photoshop, into a model, proving that even
The Dove billboard can easily be compared to the story of the “World of Wrestling” from Barthes Mythologies. In the story, wrestling is described as a myth for the simple reason that the audience doesn’t care if a wrestling match is rigged, but rather what it is seeing taking place. They don’t think about reality or truth. In fact, they really don’t think at all; they see (Barthes 2000, p.15). This can be applied to the Dove advertisement because the audience is only engaged with what it sees, not with the truth and persuasion of the ad. The target audience doesn’t realize that what they’re seeing was all a
What followed was unexpected buzz as the campaign gained traction around the world, becoming a major water cooler topic before the days of social media spreading ideas like wildfire. New Dove products were launched using the same creative idea – showing real women with different hair types, skin types and body types, loving themselves and their favourite Dove products, often in their underwear.
While the water cooler buzz and media attention escalated (Oprah had those underwear-clad women on her show), one of the most talked-about aspects of the campaign came as a complete surprise to MacLeod and her team – the viral power of striking the right chord.
By now, almost everyone has seen the “Evolution” video on YouTube (12 million people and counting), depicting a woman who gets transformed, through makeup and Photoshop, into a model, proving that even
The Dove billboard can easily be compared to the story of the “World of Wrestling” from Barthes Mythologies. In the story, wrestling is described as a myth for the simple reason that the audience doesn’t care if a wrestling match is rigged, but rather what it is seeing taking place. They don’t think about reality or truth. In fact, they really don’t think at all; they see (Barthes 2000, p.15). This can be applied to the Dove advertisement because the audience is only engaged with what it sees, not with the truth and persuasion of the ad. The target audience doesn’t realize that what they’re seeing was all a