2017

Management of Change
REBRANDING OF DOVE

SUBMITTED BY
ADARSH AJANTHA SAMAN PGP 030/02
SANDEEP RANGA PGP 044/02
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INDEX
Introduction 2
Brand Evolution of Dove till 2000 2
Why the Change? 3
How was the Change brought about? 3
Results 4
Comparing the Changes with Kotters 8 step model 5
Force Field Analysis of Doves Change 7
Learnings from Dove 9
References 10
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Introduction
Dove
Dove is a personal care brand owned by Unilever which was originated in the United Kingdom. It
was introduced in 1955, 62 years ago. Today Dove contributes to about 12.5% of Unilevers
revenue and is considered as one among the most valued brands in the world. The original
patent of manufacturing Dove was granted to Vincent Lamberti, who worked under Lever
brothers. A silhouette profile of brands namesake bird is used as the logo. Dove products are
currently manufactured in 20 countries and sold over more than 80 countries. The product
portfolio includes cleansing bars, body washes, hand washes, face care, hair care, deodorants
and body lotions, for both men and women. Main competitors of Dove are P&Gs Ivory and Olay,
Kaos Jergens, Beiersdorfs Nivea.

Unilever
Unilever currently is the Europes 7th most valued company. It is a transnational consumer goods
company co-headquartered in London, UK and Rotterdam, Netherlands. It was founded in 1930,
87 years ago. Its portfolio includes food, beverages, cleansing agents and personal care products
and are available in around 190 countries. Unilever owns 400 brands out of which thirteen brands
have sales over one billion. Total revenue generated by Unilever during FY 16 was $63.25 billion
and has around 169,000 employees.

Brand Evolution of Dove till 2000

1957: Launched in the Market
In 1957, Dove soap was launched in the market. Advertisement campaign for Dove was created
by the Ogilvy and Mather advertising agency. The message was Dove soap doesnt dry your skin
because its one quarter cleansing cream.
1970: Popularity increased as milder soap
During 1970s, the term cleansing cream was replaced with moisturizing cream; but dove stayed
with the claim not to dry skin, and the refusal to call itself a soap.
1980: Endorsed by Physicians and Dermatologists to treat dry skin
Due to its moisturizing properties, Physicians and Dermatologists all over the world started
endorsing Dove as a solution for dry skin.
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1995: Extension of Doves range of products

During 1995 to 2000, Dove extended its range of products. It also stepped its feet in mens beauty
products.

Why the Change?

In February 2000, Unilever initiated a strategic five-year initiative called Path to Growth. The
main objective of this plan was to winnow its more than 1600 brands down to 400. A small
number of brands were selected to be the Masterbrand, and was mandated to serve as an
umbrella identity over a range of products. Reasons for initiating Path to Growth was
1. Global decentralization created problems of control.
2. Lacked unified identity for its products as directions of marketing the brand was set
by brand managers in each of the geographic regions
3. To create Masterbrands with global vision and geographical cooperation
Due to the initiation of Path to growth, Dove had to lend its name to the categories beyond
beauty bars. Till that point of time, many of the Doves advertisements spoke of the functional
benefits. As functionality meant different things in different categories Dove was unable to move
forward with its existing strategy. Unilever decided that Dove should stand for a point of view.
After a long process of exploratory market research, conversation with women, consulting with
experts and message testing led to The Campaign for Real Beauty.

How was the change brought about?

The origins of the idea of The Real Beauty Campaign came from Silvia Lagnado, who served as
the global brand director of Dove during 2000. Initially, she hired two experts Nancy Etcoff and
Suzy Orbach. Nancy was a Harvard University psychiatrist working at the Massachusetts General
Hospital. She was the author of the book Survival of the prettiest. Suzy Orbach was a London
based Psychotherapist who was best known for treating Lady Diana Spencer of the British royal
family. She was the author of the book Fat is a Feminist Issue.
Pre Campaign Survey
Unilever went 3000 women across 10 countries and explored some of the hypothesis generated
by the psychologists. They found that only 2% of respondents worldwide chose to describe
themselves as beautiful. Young, white, blonde and thin were considered as the characteristics of
a beautiful woman universally. All the existing beauty products portrayed them in
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advertisements and packaging. Many women thought these were unattainable standards for
them. So rather than being inspired by these promotions, women felt taunted.
Findings from the survey made Unilever launch the Campaign for Real Beauty
Step 1: Tick-box Campaign
Silvia hired a British photographer John Rankin Waddel who was well known for using ordinary
people in super model context. Using him, the Tick-box campaign was launched in 2004.
Billboards were erected featuring ordinary women with two tick boxes. Some of them were
Grey? Gorgeous?, Ugly spots? Beauty spots?, Freckled? Flawless? etc. Viewers were asked
to vote by dialing to 1-888-342-DOVE. A counter near the billboards showed votes in real time.
This campaign attracted a lot of public interest.
Step 2: Firming Campaign
Firming campaign was launched in 2005. It had a new series of ads featuring six real women
cheerfully posing in plain white underwear. This was known as firming campaign because they
promoted a cream that firmed skin. The main intentions of these ads were to provoke discussion
and debate about real beauty and to change the way society views beauty.
Step 3: Self Esteem Campaign
It was a particularly controversial campaign from Unilever. At a Dove leadership team off-site
meeting, an effort was made to engage the employees by filming their own daughters in a series
of ads. The self-esteem challenges of girls were discussed in those ads. These ads were widely
admired by the public. These ads ran in the 2006 Superbowl between the Pittsburgh Steelers and
Seattle Seahawks.
Step 4: Evolution
Dove was conducting self-esteem workshops for girls all around the world to boost their self-
esteem. Ogilvy and Mather, an advertisement agency, developed a 112 second film to drive
traffic to such a workshop in Canada. When the North American brand building team saw the
film, they decided to provide a wider audience for the film. Thus the film was aired globally and
was named Evolution.

Results
The sales of Dove increased by $1.2 billion in 2005, the year after the launch of rebranding Dove,
from $2.5 billion to $ 3.7 billion. Much of the growth was due to its extension into new personal
care categories which was not possible using Doves earlier branding strategies. The Real Beauty
Campaign attracted huge public attention. Thousands of blogs were written and large number of
internet chats happened about the campaign. In September 2016, Landor Associates, a global
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leader in brand consulting and design, identified Dove as one of the 10 brands with the greatest
percentage gain in brand health and business value.

Comparing the Change with Kotters 8 step model

Step 1: Create Urgency
To bring about this change, Silvia Lagnado knew created a sense of urgency by leveraging on the
problems in current branding strategy of the Dove. Many of the Dove ads featured functional
benefits of the products, which meant different for different products. So consumers were
getting confused and the brand identity of Dove was getting lost. So she pointed out that Dove
should establish a meaning for itself in the minds of the consumers. After the patent for a primary
synthetic cleanser used in Dove expired, P&G was using the same to introduce its own range of
similar products and jockeying for first place in the market for premium cleansers. Also Dove
faced failure when they tried to introduce Dove washing liquid in 1965. Pointing out all these,
she created a sense of urgency at Dove.

Step 2: Form a powerful coalition

Silvia Lagnado exactly knew that bringing about the whole change was much more than what she
can handle alone. So she teamed up with senior executives from different divisions for the
execution of the rebranding. Kathy OBrein, Doves Marketing Director for United States division
and Todd Tillemans, General Manager of North American Skin Business were among her main
alliances during the change. She also partnered with three universities under Joan Santos, the
creator of the Purpose Originality Value (POV) strategy to make a creative strategic effort for the
campaign.

Step 3: Create a Vision of Change

The vision of Dove was to make a more woman beautiful by broadening the narrow definition
of beauty and inspiring to take great care of themselves. The strategy to execute the change
was developed under Joan Santos and was named as the mission strategy. This strategy
discarded the existing brand essence ladder which was used by Unilever at that time.

Step 4: Communicate the Vision

After she got the idea of Real Beauty from the pre campaign surveys, Silvia went to present it to Chief
Marketing and Communication Officer (CMCO) of Unilever and he was impressed. With the backing up of
CMCO, she was able to communicate her idea to the rest of the organization. Her directness, passion and
transparency about what she know and also willingness to admit what she didnt know quickly convinced
her colleagues that she was real deal.
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Step 5: Remove Obstacles

There were mainly three obstacles faced by Silvia during the change process. Firstly, the change was
against the existing mission of the company. Secondly, the billboards erected during Tick-box campaign
were not having the name of Dove in it. Thirdly, Dove ads were not giving people a promise to take them
to a new level of attractiveness. Many people in top management feared that it could reduce the customer
base. To tackle with these problems, initially Silvia changed the mission statement of the company and
everyone working on the change was made to know the mission statement by heart. The ads which
launched after the tick-box campaign had Doves brand logos in it. Also, she dealt with the fears of top
management by providing the pre-campaign survey report, which provided scientific credibility to the
Real Beauty Campaign.

Step 6: Create short term wins

In order to prove that the change was moving in the right direction, Silvia designed some achievable short-
term goals. They were

1. Increase the net sales

2. Attract more media engagement
3. Provoke discussion and debate about real beauty

She was able to achieve all these short-term goals which increased her credibility in the organization.

Step 7: Build on the Change

After the launch of Firming Campaign, the Real Beauty Campaign had huge acceptance in the public. Even
after that, some senior officials in Dove were concerned about the validity of Silvias idea as they were not
able to relate themselves in the campaign. They believed that self-esteem issues are not a common issue
among women to leverage upon. So, during a Dove leadership team off-site meeting, an effort was made
to engage employees by filming their own daughters in the next series of ads. It discussed the self-esteem
challenges faced by a girl. More and more contents were launched through a network of 200 local
newspapers, 60 plus national broadcasts and print outlets like People Magazine. As video ads were getting
more responses, Dove focused on more video ads.

Step 8: Anchor the Change in Corporate Culture

As the Real Beauty Campaign succeeded, Dove stopped ads describing functional benefits of a product.
They repositioned themselves as a brand with a point of view. Dove ran self-esteem workshops for girls
all over the world. In the ads, they featured real women instead of models and used realistic plots which
showcased the common self-esteem issues faced by a woman.
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Force Field Analysis of Doves Change

Step 1: Describe your plan
1. To create a meaning for brand Dove
2. To have an emotional connect with customers
3. To change the way society views beauty
4. Provoke discussions about real beauty

Step 2: Identify the forces for change

Internal drivers of Change
1. Not able to promote Dove brand on the basis of functionality
2. Problems faced by extending current brand portfolio
External drivers of Change
1. Intense competition in the market
2. The low self-esteem among beauty product users

Step 3: Identify Forces against Change

Internal factors
1. Fears of Unknown
2. Changes in strategy from essence ladder
External factors
1. Negative opinion from stereotypes
2. Viewers might feel ads a little unsettling
3. The strategy is contrary to the existing status quo
4. No promise of taking users to a new level of attractiveness

Step 4: Assign Scores

Internal drivers of Change
1. Not able to promote Dove brand on the basis of functionality +5
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2. Problems faced by extending current brand portfolio +4

External drivers of Change

1. Intense competition in the market +3
2. The low self-esteem among beauty product users +3
Sum = +15

Internal factors
1. Fears of Unknown -2
2. Changes in strategy from essence ladder -3
External factors
1. Negative opinion from stereotypes -1
2. Viewers might feel ads a little unsettling -1
3. The strategy is contrary to the existing status quo -3
4. No promise of taking users to a new level of attractiveness -3
Sum = -13

Step 5: Analyze and Apply

After analyzing the forces for change and forces against change, its evident that a change is
required in the organization. Negative opinions from the outside world can be used as a topic of
discussion, and hence increase the reach of Doves vision. Fears of going against the status quo
could be dealt with designing content rich advertisements. Also by standing for the self-esteem
of women, it can create an emotional bond with its customers.
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Learnings from Dove

Key learnings from the Change process that happened in Dove are:
1. Survey the world. Get to know the culture
2. Partner with enthusiasts of the change
3. Implement the changes step by step over a time frame
4. People from middle level can also initiate changes in an organization
5. The attitude of other people in the management towards change depends highly on the
charisma and personality of the leader of change
6. A change need not be only within an organization, it can change the whole mindset of a
community also
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References
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dove_(toiletries)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unilever
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dove_Campaign_for_Real_Beauty
www.dove.com
Annual Report of Unilever 2004-05,2005-06 and 2016-17
Seth Steveson, When Tush Comes to Dove
Fortune Magazine, September 18, 2006
http://www.stevedenning.com/Conferences/SmithsonianMay07.htm