WK2 Analysis: Brands & The Human Connection/Curating 3

Dove is a health care brand owned by Unilever. The company has a vision of a world where beauty is a source of confidence and not of anxiety.

In 2004, Dove began its campaign for real beauty. They organized a study involving 3,000 women in 10 different countries and realized that only 2 percent of the women considered themselves as beautiful and this proved a good opportunity for the company. The company was recently beginning to introduce beauty supplies, other than soap and decided to start a conversation about beauty.

Dove came up with many commercials to showcase their brand and to convey the message of “every woman is actually beautiful.” Of the lot, one commercial stood out. It was the Dove Real Beauty Sketches. In this commercial a forensic artist (Gil Zamora) and several women told a story, which proved that women considered themselves to be less beautiful than how others saw them. This was done by comparing the sketches he drew from the self-description of the subjects and the sketches drawn from third party descriptions of the same subjects. In all of the sketches, the self-description sketches were less beautiful than the others. The message of the video goes along with company’s mission to tell women that they should be confident in their beauty.

The video was able to reach its target audience effectively, which was the female gender. The message was what women could relate to, because most of them could not see themselves as beautiful, therefore an emotional connection was established.

Dove wanted the experience of the video to be more realistic and engaging so that a more human connection will be achieved. The characters of the video were not popular but regular women that were going through what was being addressed. The setting of the video was in a large open room that could be seen as a studio. The open space and cool light represented the natural look that they were trying to convey. The music was the soft plays of a piano that also appealed to the emotional senses.

The shots were shown not more than 3 seconds so as to continue to have the audience’s attention. The only time that the shots were a bit longer was when the women where explaining their thoughts.

Close ups of the faces and hand movements of the women showed nervousness and that they weren’t so comfortable with what was happening. This also added to the human connection that they were trying to establish.

Dove wanted to convey that they weren’t just a company that produced beauty supplies but as a brand that believed in something that will continue to impact the lives of women around the world. The commercial showed its self as effective because sales increased to $4 billion from the $2.5 billion in its opening campaign year, although it’s surprising that no Dove logo or product was shown till the end of the commercial. Not only did the commercial help increase Dove’s sales but it also increased women’s confidence. Research done by a Harvard psychologist, Nancy Etcoff noted that women today now describe beauty on a larger variety outside of just looks.

The commercial also increased Dove’s presence. Less than a month after the launch, the commercial obtained up to 144 millions views, meaning the most successful online advertising of all time. It also got up 121 print features and 248 major broadcast news and lifestyle features, with 4 billion PR and blogger impressions and 30 times the media exposure of the paid-for media space. This just proves the impact that emotional content has on people.

Because of this, other brands like Thai Life Insurance are using the emotional appeal to their advantage. The company launched their Unsung Hero commercial and in less than three weeks it hit the 1million mark. The commercial also obtained up to 15 thousand shares on The blaze.

Therefore, as someone that wants to create content, I need to make sure that what I create has some sort of emotional connection to the viewers. People will always love to share a good emotional story and this is what several brands are using now and I need to be part of that. `