This no doubt will be a contentious issue, but I have started noticing more and more campaigns not being consistent to their core brand idea.Sure things should always be able to evolve, but when a brand is representing a ‘philosophy’, then you can’t just go and do work that is contrary to it.
Lets take DOVE for example …
I really love their Campaign For Real Beauty idea – sure it’s not as pragmatic as say the Body Shop tried to do with their ‘Supermodel’ campaign – but they have been very consistent in encouraging, celebrating and communicating their belief that all women are beautiful, even if they don’t subscribe to the conventional definition of the word as promoted by catwalks and magazines.
Lets remember this is a Unilever brand – hardly the greatest company for social causes – so the fact they’ve done quite alot of things to demonstrate they really believe in this idea rather than just shouting about it, is cause for congratulation.
OK, so they still run their ads in the usual crop of beauty mags – which sort of bothers me, especially because they could have taken the opportunity to slag off the other brands in the mag who are basically keeping many women in the trap of believing external appearance is all that matters – but all in all I think this is a great campaign [even though it doesn’t work in Asia for cultural reasons] and could be a blueprint for many other brands who regard their category as ‘low interest’.
It still bothers me how Unilever can support great ad ideas like this and AXE/Lynx then put out shit like the Magnum campaign with Eva Longoria, but that’s something I’ve already bitched about so I’ll get back to the point …
So DOVE have been very consistent over a long period of time with a very simple and powerful idea and then someone, somewhere goes and approves this ..
If you can’t read the body copy, it say’s this …
WHY DO SO MANY AUSTRALIAN WOMEN PREFER DOVE SUMMER GLOW?
DOVE Summer Glow is the first tanning moisturiser to exclusively combine ingredients which help prevent streaking and prolong your tan. We guarantee you’ll prefer it too.
Now you might not think there’s anything wrong with that – except the way the copy is written seems to undermine the whole concept that all women are beautiful regardless how they look externally.
In other words it’s a creative/client not really appreciating the intricacy of the brand idea.
To be honest, I’ve had these issues with Aussie agencies interpretation international brand core ideas before [LOWES did a campaign for Lynx/Axe that was quite possibly one of the worst pieces of shit I’ve ever seen] and while cultural differences have to be taken into account to ensure brand relevancy with the target audience, that doesn’t justify this DOVE ad any more than it justified LOWES turning Lynx into basically the ‘Hooters’ of deodorants.
Now you may think I’m being pedantic – and maybe I am – but all it needed was the copy to be written from the angle of ‘moisturising skin’ first and the tanning benefits second – is that so hard?
Well it probably is, but isn’t that why clients pay agencies a fortune? For our ability to make the complicated simple and interesting?
If I really wanted to be a pain in the ass I could argue that DOVE shouldn’t even be going into product areas like tanning in the first place because it’s a blatant ‘artificial beauty product’ – however as I have said many times before, companies only value strategy till they feel there’s another revenue stream they think they can tap into.
The only justification I can come up with for this DOVE ad is that it was made for Australia – a land where having ‘tanned’ skin is a big thing – though I still think it would have been more powerful if they’d gone against this stereotype rather than actively embrace it or at least made the product more of a ‘sunscreen’ than a ‘tanning lotion’. [Though I am guessing this product is more for Australia’s winter months rather than the summer where you get a tan just by walking to the corner shop! If that’s the case, couldn’t they have said it was a moisturiser that brought out the skins natural beauty, including all the sunshine you absorbed from the previous Summer?]
I am under no illusion that the general public haven’t noticed this slip up – but it’s these sort of things that drive me [and especially Andy] mad because in it’s own small way it undermines the purpose of the brand and if these things are allowed to get through, then it gets progressively worse to the point where it wouldn’t surprise me if DOVE launched a full-on range of cosmetics.
What bothers me most is that it could have been so easy to sort out – people just had to spent a little time understanding what the brand stood for and then write around that – but no, it goes out because it ‘looks like a DOVE ad even if it doesn’t ‘speak’ like one.
To be fair to the agency, I bet the client pushed this approach because they wanted the products ‘tanning’ benefits upfront and centre, but I still think this is the sort of thing creatives and planners should fight against – or get involved in the process much earlier – because our whole credibility is linked to the actions of our clients so when they make a stupid decision, it’s not just them who suffer the consequences.