Dove: evolution of a brand Essay

The aim of this case study, written by hind end Deighton, is to highlight and explain the r farmingary brand evolution outline at the basis of the extraordinary Unilevers come d receive results, achieved in 2007. Overview Masterbrands as divide of the Path to Grow strategy Unilever is a leading multinational society active in the food, home and personal care sectors. It has been developing glob aloney during the years, creating several of the intimately in(predicate) brands of the world.Its expansion allowed a geographical variegation but to a fault brought some problems of controls especially the brand portfolio had grown in an unstructured expression and required a change of course. Indeed, in February 2000 Unilever began the so called Path to Growth, a five-year strategic activity which included the reshaping and the shake-up of the brand portfolio. More precisely, the smart set planned to reduce its more than than 1,600 brands to four hundred and, among them, select a small number of Masterbrands responsible for creating a terminate and global identity to be shared with the range of products, included under each Masterbrand name.In this broad strategy it is situated the outstanding evolution of one of the survived brands, genus Columba, which was selected to become the Masterbrand for Unilever personal care products, beyond the sweetie take out category and including hair care products, deodorants, body lotions etc. dove Masterbrand strategy development fall, until February 2000, had always been orienting to meet its costumers needs, providing them products, with a scientifically be functional superiority. As a logical consequence, its advertisements had always been centered in promoting the cited higher functionality, preferring natural-looking women rather than fashion model icon in score to communicate honesty and authenticity.But a marketing strategy to fig a unique Masterbrand identity could no longer be ground on functional supe riority, as explained by Deighton it should create a kernel for come down, as a Masterbrand, to be applied to all its products. Pursuing the surmount way to develop the proper image, the management had to slightly change the sexual climax to the promotion. Elements such as client need, scientific research, the study of natural-looking women and honesty and authenticity survived as central persuasions, but they were reassembled and combined differently to accomplish the mentioned goal.The scientific research was no longer used to develop product functionality but, it was the starting guide of the new strategy a planetary investigation led by the global brand director for Dove, genus Silvia Lagnado, and interpreted with the help of two experts, revealed that women generally perceived aesthetic canons, typically illustrated in the advertisements, as very distant and unreachable. It was found out that closely of the women didnt mirror themselves in the advertise c erstpt of b eauty and a further survey showed that only the 2% of the interviewed described themselves as beautiful. Dove experts recognized a cultural issue the beauty-related belief of average women and the advertised beauty werent matching.The misalignment generated frustration in women and, as a relevant consequence for Dove, negatively affected the sales of health and care products. So, apprised of women dissatisfaction, of their personality, of their need to feel beautiful and keeping in mind Dove internal goals, the management gave life to the radical strategy and decided that Dove should have stood for a point of view. The management decided that natural-looking women would have had a key role in the take to the woods, but with a different office instead of promoting Doves products they would have promoted their average beauty, with honesty and authenticity. The campaign for Real Beauty was setup and ready to be implemented. The Aim(s) of the campaign born(p) from the simply idea of creating a common and clear image to be shared with the Dove Masterbrand products, The campaign for Real Beauty has been then veritable and changed as it went forward, pursuing further goals and, at the end, revealing itself somewhat different. As a matter of fact and as declared by Kathy OBrien, Dove marketing director for U.S, the company wanted to change the way society views beauty and provoke discussion and debate about satisfying beauty. This aim was reflected in the Doves mission statement, lucubrate for the campaign, and it was enhanced with a relevant aspect the expected repayment for the company, which was keenly expressed. The statement said Doves mission is to make more women feel beautiful every day by broadening the destine definition of beauty and inspiring them to take great care of themselves.And hither the real purpose of the whole initiative became clearer. With the declared aim to develop the common levers for the Masterbrand and to overcome the beauty-rela ted mismatch, emerged from the scientific research, Dove started the campaign. Then, inducing the partnership to a proactive involvement and to debate on such meaning, the company began in a certain sense the democratization process of the beauty. So, organism recognized as the entity responsible of the birth of such a waspish process and as a provider of a clear and rule-breaker point of view, Dove started to be on everyones lips.It remarkably increased its popularity and most important, allowed it to captivate a huge number of potential clients those women to be helped in perceiving themselves beautiful every day by broadening the definition of beauty and to be inspired to take great care of themselves. Paraphrasing the meaning of the peak to inspire to take great care of themselves, the commercial aim of Doves campaign for real beauty becomes apparent. What do the campaign trenchant?The combination of different elements do the design and the implementation of the campaign s o successful. As a first element, the campaign has its roots in the context of a clear brands mission, shared on a global level. The structure of the organization introduced by the Path to Growth strategy, which let out the responsibility for each brand between two groups, the Brand Development, alter and global in scope, and Brand Building, decentralized according to the regions in which Unilever was gnarly and responsible to bring the brand to life in each marketplace, intimately helped in defining a global mission.Once developed, the brands mission worked as a benchmark for each initiative a cornerstone around which, the whole campaign moved and evolved. Furthermore, the settlement of a well-defined mission was crucial to maintain the control over the campaign, once it had been shared with the community and on purpose exposed to its assessment, starting what I called the democratization process of the beauty concept. And exactly this process is the skylark that I consider t he sharpest and the most effective of the whole strategy.Indeed Dove, proposing and support its unconventional point of view, with the aim to provoke discussion and debate, really made people feel part of revolution and, at the same time, signally got the company closer to its potential clients. In order to increase womens engagement, Dove, at a certain point of the campaign, directly asked them to film their own daughters discussing their self-esteem challenges and later on, to create their own ads for Dove Cream crude oil Body Wash and to participate at the contest the Real Ads by Real Women. It extremely helped in creating a strong social interconnectedness between Doves supporters and the company they were joint forces against stereotypes of beauty.Moreover, the involvement of the community, feeling in a more general sense and which spontaneously commented and also criticized the campaign, was crucial to increasing Doves initiative range and for its goals fulfillment. This as pect was part of a further successful feature of the strategy, the so-called Media planning, which was revolutionary and tailored as well. Responsible of the strategy and the investments for the campaign diffusion, the Media planning unit, as said, relied on the engagement of the community and of Internet too and so, it centered the investments in creating and expanding the community of the real beauty seekers.It included the purchase of a Superbowl advertisement space. Thanks to such investments and to Youtube, which played a key role in the divulgation of the ads, the phenomenon reached an extraordinary dimension and, as a consequence, the debate started to spread all over, acquiring more and more media hype, insomuch as 16 proceeding of Today Show were dedicated to one of the campaign initiatives even Oprah given a full show to self-esteem, built around a Doves advertisement. Critics, discussions and parodies rose in sequence, did nothing but increased the relevancy of the camp aign and amplified its range, exactly as planned by Dove. These are the reasons that made the revolutionary and unprecedented Doves campaign so successful and helpful for the company in becoming one of 10 brands with the greatest percentage gain in brand health and business value in the past three years and in its $1.2 billion of grow. References bum Deighton, (Rev March 25, 2008), Dove Evolution of a brand, 9-508-047 Harvard Business school