If you haven’t taken a moment to appreciate the work that Unilever is doing with its Dove Self Esteem Fund and related campaign, you’re missing something truly special in the world of marketing. What’s more, you’re missing a great example of the new face of powerful, authentic marketing… infusing emotion and meaning into what could easily be a big, boring brand.

The campaign is supported in large part by a number of brilliantly composed, thought provoking, debate inspiring videos created by Ogilvy & Mather Toronto. If you haven’t seen “Evolution,” you need to take a moment and watch it right now.

This Dove self esteem campaign is worthy of serious study and reflection, but there are three aspects of it that I want to call your attention to right now.

1. The viral power of videos like this one
2. The importance of walking the talk when you embark on a campaign that demands corporate integrity
3. What it must be like to try to compete with Dove now that they have carved out this position for themselves

We’re all familiar with the Dove brand. Soap… skin cream… you can get it most anywhere. Paraphrasing Alison Leung (the Dove marketing manager behind the campaign), the way to differentiate a commodity like a bar of soap is to give it meaning that extends far beyond the significance of the product itself.

This is exactly what Dove has done. They observed a societal problem – self esteem in women – particularly body image issues in young women. They validated it with their own research and learned that only 2% of women feel beautiful. 94% of young women want to change some aspect of how they look.

As beauty industry insiders, one could assume that they were aware of the beauty scam that is exposed in their “Evolution” video.

So what did they do? Turn the whole beauty industry on its ear by exposing the beauty scam and declaring themselves to be different from the rest of the industry.

They fanned the flames of public outrage with videos like “Evolution” and used new social media outlets to reach millions. “Evolution” has been viewed more than 7 million times (roughly 10 million on YouTube alone).

Another one of the videos is titled “Onslaught.” It condenses a year’s worth of beauty pressure into one minute and juxtaposes the innocence of seven-year-old girls and the avalanche of subtle influences and overt suggestions that can make them believe they’re not good enough.

Another is “Amy,” which shows how hard girls can be on themselves, and is designed to be passed along to young girls by people who love them. The film has a unique twist that allows it to be personalized for each recipient.

They have created interactive tools that include:

• A first-ever “girls-only” self-esteem website to help those aged 11-16 explore beauty, body image and self-esteem in an interactive and inviting environment;
• A dedicated section of the website containing activities for mothers and mentors to engage in with the young girls in their lives;
• A pilot “Girls for Girls Mentor Program,” which brings older and younger students together to discuss self-esteem issues;
• Online “Tools for Teachers,” designed to help facilitate in-class discussion around all of the fund’s videos.

Most people would be surprised to learn that this campaign started in 2004 – not in the U.S., but in Canada and then in Europe.

Now… suppose Dove had failed to walk the talk.

Suppose they used touched-up super models in their ads. Suppose they sparked all of this debate only to actually do nothing truly different from anyone else in their industry.

Having taken a stand as bold as this one, intuitively you have to know they had better back it up with their actions. This is exactly what they’ve done.

They created the Dove Self Esteem Fund with the goal of positively affecting the lives of 5 million girls globally by the year 2010. They appear to be well on their way to reaching that goal.

Unilever staff members actually conduct Self Esteem Workshops in schools as a part of living out their individual answers to the great question posed to all company employees – “Do you want to do your job… or change the world?”

Look at what a company that sells a highly commoditized product can do by:

• leveraging viral marketing through great videos on social medial sites…
• sparking public debate…
• thrusting an industry skeleton from the closet (the beauty scam)…
• taking a bold, controversial position…
• setting and proclaiming audacious goals to do good for society…
• and actually walking the talk.

And by the way, while I have no stats to share, Alison reports that Dove sales are doing great and the worldwide response to the campaign has been overwhelming.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 3rd, 2007 at 2:39 pm and is filed under Infinite Return Marketing, Real-Time Case Studies, Web Marketing, Marketing Principles, Customer Experience. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.