The Musings Of An Opinionated Sod [Help Me Grow!]

I agree with you all the way Robert, the ability to be creatively consistent towards a central idea is becoming less and less common but I don’t think this is purely the fault of the creatives because there are so many people/departments who are involved in the journey of creative output that the blame for this situation has to be shared equally.

There are many reasons why this is happening but I think fundamental communication training is one of the key issues because I am seeing more and more portfolios/briefs that have either amazing style but little substance, no imagination but plenty of rationality or no strategy just plenty of hope.

I am sure this post will encourage certain individuals to say you’re out of date with your attitude; that you’re limiting brands creative and financial potential, trying to impose a structure on imagination or just talking about things no one cares about, but they would be missing the point of what you’re actually saying and what we’re paid to do.

This is a great post and though many of the public won’t notice or care what you’re saying, it is one of the small elements that has helped Axe, Virgin, BK, Nike and Mini be the brands that they are.

PS: I really like the “brings out the sunshine of the last 6 months” idea for Dove.

aw man, the whole dove things gets me quite feisty! what with the recent ‘expose’ that they retouch the fuck out of their models as much as revlon, l’oreal and the rest of the meat market crew, (which isn’t all that surprising, but depressing nonetheless), couple that with this kind of thoughtless crap, dove is going to start losing its advocates fast, even if they’re not losing consumers straight away (a rapid downward slide only needs the slightest shift).

i can see that tanning stuff would work with their core idea if it was to prevent women getting out into the (esp. harsh aussie) sun and baking the crap out of their skin by taking care of themselves better. but if it’s just to jump on the recent fad of looking like a navel orange with uber obvious fake-tan, then dove can take a fucking swan dive.

and the fact that the advertising/comms community don’t jump all over this more means that the industry will continue to come off as the facilitators for this kind of manipulation of women’s vulnerabilities for material gain, again and again.

Rob, you’re forgetting the most important thing – NOBODY reads the body copy…

i’ll shut up from now on. i’m just repeating shit obviously.

theres nothing wrong with repeating yourself or others lauren, campbell has somehow made a career out of it

Consistency and coherence are the key to any “positioning” and is one of the reasons why the idea that businesses should stand for something is so compelling. I wonder if it’s slipping in this example and elsewhere because marketers don’t understand that and react to the impactful “creative” element of an ad rather than its whole or whether the belief that “messaging” is bad leads to a more scattergun project by project approach?

I firmly believe that brands mean different things to different people and that it is the people rather than the brands that assign those values, but without consistency and coherence in the brand’s efforts, confusion will ultimately reign.

P.S. George’s silence on this interesting matter is I assume due to the fact that he’s still locked in the garage.

of course we cared about dove northern. for the first time, underage, underdressed, overstretched women weren’t been shoved down our throats as an expectation of what it means to be beautiful.

the first time the real beauty campaign was splashed across sydney, i rang my mum to tell how beautiful she is. this ad doesn’t inspire me to do that.

i know, i said i’d shut up. i’m going now.

could lee and john get a fucking room

and george isnt still locked in the shed, hes in fucking scotland which is even fucking worse!

cock

well no words are necessary for what people think of you dodds 😉

I always thought that soap was to get your skin clean – use Coldtar soap – kills acne as well as dirt!

Hang on.

I’m all for integrity of positioning and consistency. Being real. Staying true. And good ideas, like the Dove one.

But for fuck’s sake, would having ‘moisturising skin’ in the first line and ‘tanning’ in the second line really make a huge difference?? Isn’t that just trickery? I totally agree they could have done a much better job copywriting (or briefing the copywriters), perhaps touching on ‘feeling comfortable in your own skin’, but I don’t see anything wrong with Dove providing a fake tan for tanning purposes rather than moisturisation.

Dove’s mission is to make more women feel beautiful every day by widening stereotypical views of beauty. They want to celebrate the essence of women – no matter what shape or colour it comes in. But they don’t have an issue with women beautifying themselves, however they see fit, do they? As long as they don’t feel as though they have to conform, and as long as they have high self-esteem.

Fake tan gives you confidence and makes you feel beautiful, without damaging your beautiful skin. And it’s something you can choose to do as and when you want to. Dove, to me, says ‘love your pale skin, love your healthily tanned skin, you’re beautiful no matter what’. And within that, when talking about a product, surely they’re allowed to talk about its efficacy, that it doesn’t streak??

This is not a good ad but I think you’re being overly harsh.

Morning.

Dove is about celebrating all shapes and sizes, colour and age of women but what stops them endorsing Paris Hilton is that these women are “real”, not artificial and this links to the Dove product range because they are (or were) about enhancing/enriching what nature had given women – which is why one of the key elements in their products is/was “moisturiser” (ie: rehydration)

We can argue whether a tan from the sun is “fake beauty” but as you get it by generally natural means I am inclined to think it’s not as artificial as sun ray lamps or fake tan creams and given one of Dove’s most famous ads was the “covergirl” viral, I think this publically states the brand is pro-natural woman and that is why I believe a product that creates “artificial beauty” is wrong for the brand and wrong to be used as a core message in a campaign, regardless that it does no physical damage to the body.

Dove isn’t about making the best of what you’ve got, it’s about celebrating what you’ve got which is why they support “young girl self esteem clinics” and not make wonderbras. Yet. 🙂

Sure, as long as women are doing it for themselves [rather than feeling pressured into adopting a media-driven stereotypical look] I am sure the Dove brand would happily endorse their actions, however the actual brand has – through it’s products and communication – only focused on celebrating the ‘real [ie: raw/natural] you’ which is why this product confuses their position … and if they’ve changed their stance, which is quite possible, then they should make sure everyone knows about it. Or at least me. 🙂

In all seriousness, I do understand and accept what you’re saying Angus – and this comment probably has come out harsher than intended (blame it on a hell plane journey and a late connection … which I’m still waiting on now) – but these little things are, at least to me, important because if you let one thing go, then the slippery slope has started and it’s much quicker going down than up.

I’ll shut up now, my plane has finally been fucking called.

i fucking love angus, she got campbells knickers in a twist. too bad i find myself agreeing with every convoluted word he fucking wrote

I land and what’s the first thing I hear?

Andy going, “Angus is taking you on my boy” with a huge shit-eating grin on his face.

You are a little tinker Angus – as I said I’m [sort-of] agreeing with you …

I am sure that as long as women are doing it for themselves [rather than feeling pressured into adopting a media-driven stereotypical look] the brand would probably [I say probably because it’s a fucking Unilever brand, not a person] happily endorse any woman ‘prettyfying themselves up’ … but on a day-to-day basis, Dove – through it’s products and communication – wants to celebrate and encourage women to feel that the ‘real [ie: raw/natural] them’ is just as beautiful and worthy of feeling confident/good about which is why a fake tanning product has the potential of confusing their position because then the company is only a small step away from producing DOVE make-up , lingerie or vacuum cleaners 😉

I know it seems petty and a little thing – but brands aren’t people and having/demonstrating a core value/philosophy is important to maintain because otherwise they can lose their meaning in people’s minds in an instant, mainly because society has far more important things to worry/rejoyce about.

I’m not endorsing the ‘one-word-equity’ bollocks, but I am talking about one core value/philosophy which in Dove’s case has been about Real Beauty – though it’s the definition of that term which is what we seem to be disagreeing about.

[which in itself proves how they’re still not quite there yet because even though as Mr Dodds and Mr Lee quite rightly state, “a brand is in the mind of the consumer” – the brand plays a very central role in forming that opinion in people’s minds.

People may hate Virgin but they know what it fundamentally represents [because they ‘live’ what they say and have consistently for years], though given we’re talking about DOVE – a Unilever brand – maybe they don’t want that because then that would mean they are potentially sacrificing/alienating consumers which means even less billions to reap from gullible consumers 😉 ]

PS: I did say that I’d rather they didn’t make this product at all but as I am aware companies only care about strategy till they see another way to make money, this ‘less-than-perfect’ approach would at least lead to some communication consistency. I hate messaging priorities, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have them – especially when clients make fuckwit products like this, hahaha!

Opinions are like assholes – we all have them except some are prettier than others and on this issue, mine is fucking J-Lo’s, ha!

PS: To make you happy Angus, I can tell you that I’ve copped shit all weekend from Andy and bloody Billy acting as your bloody cheerleading squad. They even called me a sexist bastard for my ‘vacuum cleaner’ joke – the hypocrites!

PPS: Here’s something DOVE should have sponsored, but in a ‘reverse mindset’ kinda-way … http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6373446796659353133

Oh fuck I love that video Rob.