Soap, sap, and the business of self-esteem

Dove has done it again.

Brilliantly, too. Just this week, it launched a campaign titled “Real Beauty Sketches” online, and women in social networks have been praising Dove for the heartwarming and friendly reminder it is communicating in its campaign.

The campaign is a social experiment in which the brand hires an FBI-trained forensic artist, Gil Zamora, to create two composite sketches of women: one is based on their own descriptions of themselves, and the other based on the descriptions given by a stranger.

The portraits are then hung side by side, and the contrast between the two is so stark, even the women themselves are moved by what they see. Dove’s lasting headline is, “You are more beautiful than you think.”

What we are shown here is not just a good example of very inspirational material, but also a fantastic example of what great advertising looks like. It’s hard for me to look at an advertisement like this, knowing all of the strategizing, brainstorming, and nitpicking put into an ad, and then feel in the end that it is still real. There is reality in advertising; it’s just heavily gift-wrapped.

There are many ways to go about an ad to make sure that you get to say what you want to say, without breaking the rules. There are rules in advertising after all, a standard to protect the so-called “truthfulness” in the industry. But it is an industry that lives on overblown claims based on substandard substantiations, and fantasized promises based on real human needs. I’ve had to defend these claims myself, and we’ve used all sorts of amusing ways to get by.

Let’s not forget too that Dove is still after all, a beauty product. It is not completely dissing the standards of beauty for women, made by companies of their very same nature. Just supporting a more natural, and widely acceptable image of what it looks like. Dove is under the same company that produces Axe, and boy do we know what its campaign is like, and how the brand thinks of women.

So no, this is not a company vision. This is not done out of the sincerity of its heart to spread the good word. There is a business objective here, and this is a brilliant marketing campaign.

There is a very resounding truth here though, and that is that this campaign is based on a very powerful human insight. And this insight, that women are their own worst critics, is a real human insight. No matter how “conceptualized” the ad may be, it doesn’t veer away from the fact that this insight is very much real.

I guess that’s the beauty of advertisements as well; they tap into the recesses of your soul and try to speak to that part of yourself that isn’t normally addressed. They have to do this, because they have to think of a way to speak to you so the product doesn’t just become functional. Because when you realize you don’t really need a deodorant for your pits, then they’ll sell it to you for something you may be lacking (like say, confidence). 

So yes, regardless of the strain of skepticism that I have about this campaign, I have to thank Dove for at least showing us this representation of reality, for selling us something intangible, and reminding us that some things we really can’t buy off a shelf… like self-esteem.