CLOSING CASE

DOVE-BUILDING A GLOBAL BRAND

In 2003, dove was not a beauty brand; it was a bar of soap that was positioned and sold
differently in different market. Unilever, the company that marketed Dove, was a storied consumer
product multinational with global reach, a strong position in fast-growing developing nations, and a
reputation for customizing products to conditions prevailing in local markets. In India, for example,
woman often oil their before washing it, so Western shampoos that do not remove the oil have not sold
well. Unilever reformulated its shampoo for India and was rewarded with market leadership. But
sometimes Unilever went too far. It used different formulations for shampoo in Hong Kong and
mainland China for example, even though hair and washing habits were very similar in both markets.
Unilever also often varied the packaging and marketing message for similar products, even for its most
commoditized products. The company tended to exaggerate complexity, and by 2003 its financial
performance was suffering.

Six years later Unilever’s financial performance had improved, in no small part because it
shifted towards a more global emphasis, and the Dove brand led the way. The Dove story dates to 2003
when the global brand director, Sylvia Lagnado, who was based in New York, decided to change the
position to an emphasis on an entire beauty brand. The basic message; the brand should stand for the
real beauty of all women. Dove’s mission was to make women feel more beautiful every day by
widening the stereotypical definition of beauty and inspiring them to take care of themselves.

But how was this mission to be executed? Following a series of workshops held around the
globe that asked brand manager and advertising agency partners to find ways to communicate an
inclusive definition of beauty, the Canadian brand manager asked 67 female photographers to submit
work that best reflects real beauty. The photographers are stunning portraits not of models, but of
women from all walks of life that come in all shapes, sizes, and ages. The project led to a coffee table
book and traveling exhibition, called the Dove Photo Tour, which garnered a lot of positive press in
Canada. Sylvia Lagnado realized that the Canadians were on to something. Around the same time, the
German office of Unilever’s advertising agency. Ogilvy and Mather Worldwide, came up with a concept
for communicating “real beauty” based on photograhps showing ordinary women, instead of skinny
models in their underwear. The original German advertisements quickly make their way to the United
Kingdom, where a London newspaper article stated that the campaign was not advertising; it was
politics. Sylvia Lagnado was not surprised by this reaction. Research the commissioned showed that only
2 percent of women worldwide considered themselves beautiful and that half thought weighed too
much.

In 2014, the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty launched globally. This campaign was a radical shift
for Unilever and the Dove Brand, which until now had left marketing in the hands of local brand
managers. Nevertheless, the real beauty campaign was tweaked to take local sensibilities into account.
For example, it was deemed better not to show women touching each other in America, while in Latin
America, while in Latin America tactile women did not shock anybody, so touching was seen as okay.

In Canada, the campaign opened up with billboard “tick box” advertisements on real women in
their underwear that invited people to call an 800 number an vote on provocative options, such as
‘Fat/Fabulous?” The votes were tallied an displayed in real time on the billboards. This created a huge
buzz, and the the technique was quickly adopted in other markets, such as the United States. As the
campaign gained traction and a positive groundswell of media attentions occurred (in the united states,
for example, the Dove Women were invited to the Oprah Winfrey Show). Unilever soon extended the
dove product line to include skin cream, shampoo, and shower gel. In 2005, the campaign was followed
by the launch of the Dove “self-exteem fond,” a worldwide campaign to persuade girls and young
women to embrace a more positive image of themselves. Unilever also made an online video, posted on
You Tube, called “Orislaught” which is critical of the beauty industry and ends with slogans such as “talk
to your daughter before the beauty industry does.” Another video, “Evolution,” shows how the face of a
girls can be changed, partly through computer graphics, to create an image of beauty. The video ends
with the tag line, “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.” Made for very little money, the
You Tube videos created a viral buzz around the Dove campaign helped transform it into one of
Unilever’s lending brands. By its issue of such as technique, the campaign for Real Beauty has become a
model for how to revitalize and build a new global brand.

CASE DISCUSSION QUESTION

1. Historically Unilever has had a reputation for customizing its product offerings and marketing
message to local market conditions. What are the benefits of this approach? What are the
drawbacks?
2. Why do you think Unilever chose to move away from its local customization strategy, and tried
to position Dove as a global brand? What emerging conditions in the global marketplace made
this strategy feasible?
3. Do you think Unilever could have pursued the same basic strategy 30 years ago? if not, why not,
and what has changed to make it possible today?
4. Despite being globally branded, Unilever still tweaked the Dove campaign from nation to nation.
Why did it do this? What does this tell you about national difference in consumer behavior?