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Branded Adventures, brand experience, brand strategy

Fat is “fab” but wrinkles are “drab”.

09.24.07 | 4 Comments

doveAs we know, the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty inspired women for the last 4 years to celebrate the natural physical variation embodied by all women and inspire them to have the confidence to be comfortable with themselves.The idea worked and Dove’s sales doubled in the proceeding years. However, it seems when the Dove brand and creative advertising team decided to explore another natural physical variation embodied in being women, sales abruptly slowed.

This phenomenon?
Aging.
And what does aging equal?

= wrinkles

And, according to a recent blog posting on Advertising Age, wrinkles do not sell soap. IN FACT WRINKLES OFFEND.

Entering a new vertical and expanding the category for any brand is always risky. However it must have been a calculated risk, balancing Dove’s successful leadership as an empowerment brand and leveraging an already loyal base.

So in February of this year (2007), Ladies’ Home Journal published a the “Pro-Age” campaign, including a series of photographs featuring nude “grandmothers” taken by the famous Ms. Leibovitz.

dove

According to Suzanne Grayson, a longtime beauty-industry consultant, the concept does appeal to many women, but embracing unvarnished aging when anti-aging products dominate skin care is risky. “What they’re saying is that [the brand] is for people who are giving up,” Ms. Grayson said.

GIVING UP?!

giving up what? I ask. Giving up being a consumer? Giving up the idea that life is cycle? Giving up the the idea that youth, beauty, vitality is slipping away? I don’t think so. Again, those definitions of what is beautiful must shift, just as the original Dove campaign contributed so successfully to.

…you know the slogan, “you’ve come a long way, baby“, well this time we stopped short. As women, we still have a way to go to reclaim our perception of beauty and shift consciousness defining what those parameters actually are. Aging IS NOT NEGATIVE, it’s a natural fact of life…..and I, as someone who is fast approaching her 41th birthday, am ready to change those definitions!!!

That is all.

Rant done.

4 Comments

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