Brand History of Dove

Brand History of Dove 

Dove is an American personal care brand owned by the British multinational consumer goods company Unilever which started in the US with the revolutionary new beauty cleansing bar.  From the very starting, Dove attempted to stand out in the personal care segment primarily hitting the market in 1957 by the Lever Brothers. Dove's soap advertisements indicated that their soap was much better for your skin than regular soap due to its mildness and one quarter cleansing cream. They even added tag lines like 'Suddenly soap is Old-fashioned! and 'Dove creams your skin while you wash.' They care about how the products are made and what all goes into them, its impact on the planet and how they can strive for a better, a more sustainable way of being. The brand makes use of various verbal and visual language elements that cohesively communicate the brands' values, personality, purpose and contributes to shaping its identity. These properties broadly constitute of the brands tone of voice, brand symbols and brand story. Dove's tone of voice is supportive, confident, sincere, friendly, inspiring, genuine, reliable and authentic. The brands personality is demonstrated as displaying empathy towards women's self confidence issues and empowering them to celebrate their authentic self and realness through its visual and verbal language elements. Furthermore, their tone of voice and language is consistently applied along their website, social media platforms and implemented in all marketing campaigns and initiatives.

(Image representing the various products made by Dove)

(Source: https://www.bebeautiful.in)

(Image representing the evolution of logos of Dove)

(Source: https://1000logos.net/dove-logo/)

Dove is considered a people-centric brand which frequently focuses on using language that establishes an emotional connection with women by encouraging and motivating them to be the real best version of themselves as they naturally and authentically are in through storytelling and varied research case studies. Their visual identity has always been that of tenderness and elegance which can be easily seen from the brand's logotype, having a calligraphic style and a slight italic. To differentiate itself from its competitors, Dove has been involved in various marketing campaigns which are stated as follows:

(Image representing marketing campaigns by Dove)

(Source: https://iide.co/case-studies/marketing-strategies-of-dove/)

(Image representing a campaign by Dove)

(Source: https://www.facebook.com/Dove-Campaign-2232622613674755/)

•  Evolution Film Launched on Youtube (2006): It confronted on the use of makeup and photoshops to distort's women's bodies. In the video, makeup is put on a model along with transformation of her hair to make her look almost unrecognisable. Dove believes that Evolution helped us encourage positive body image in women everywhere by exposing the truth behind the media's magic tricks and showing them that our perception of beauty is distorted. This campaign seemed more about improving the portrayal of women in the media which can be taken as a great tactic to improve the brand experience for the customer.

(Image representing a marketing campaign done by Dove)

(Source: https://melissacmoreno5.files.wordpress.com/)

(Image representing Dove Campaign for Real Beauty)

(Source: https://in.pinterest.com/)

• Dove Stories #ShowUs: Dove has started a conversation on social media asking women to share their own stories and utilise #ShowUs to post video/picture displaying their real beauty. This campaign is termed engaging because it offers value and inspires women to be naturally themselves.

(Image representing #ShowUs campaign done by Dove)

(Source: https://www.image.ie/style/beauty/doves-new-showus-campaign-groundbreaking-women-media-148726)

• Dove Face Test Campaign: These advertisements displayed a women who washed half of her face with generic soap and the remaining face with dove soap. The portion washed with Dove would display a clear, clean and moisturised complexion whereas the other side remained dry and featured soap residue.

(Image representing Face Test Campaign done by Dove)

(Source: http://markworkcase.blogspot.com/2010/08/dove-face-test-campaign-phase-1-was.html)

• Campaign in Association with Vague India: A photoshoot campaign had been organised under this to display how women from different corners of India have their own beauty. They made a series of video campaigns to break the stereotypical definition of beauty where women with different skin tone, physique, hair colour, length, shape as well as varied fashion attire came in front of the camera to speak that they felt confident as well as beautiful from inside by utilising dove and having smooth skin and hair.

(Image representing campaign made by Dove signalling Let's Break the Rules of Beauty)

(Source: https://www.vogue.in/story/this-new-dove-campaign-is-busting-the-beauty-status-quo/)

• Choose Beautiful Campaign: It was basically a survey which had signboards depicting "Average" and "Beautiful" put on gateways of shopping centres to see how women across the globe considered themselves. The video clip displayed women with different getups some confused over which entrance to choose while others awkwardly entering through the average door. At the end, when the women were being interviewed, they stated with a smile that they would confidently move through the beautiful door if given another chance.

(Image representing Choose Beautiful Campaign by Dove)

(Source: https://fortune.com/2015/04/15/why-doves-choose-beautiful-campaign-sparked-a-backlash/)

Today, Dove is currently the world's number 1 cleansing brand recommended by Dermatologists, with sales of over $2.5 billion a year in more than 80 countries. It has developed many different kind of personal care products which primarily fall into 5 distinctive categories:

• Washing and Bathing: Beauty Bar, Liquid soaps, body wash
• Skin Care: Moisturising, Dry Skin Care, Body Lotion, Face wash
• Antiperspirant Deodorants: Roll-On Antiperspirant Deodorant
• Hair Care: Shampoo, Conditioner, Hair Oil, Dry Hair Treatment, Anti-Dandruff Treatment, Damaged Hair Care
• Dove Collections: Dove Go Fresh, Purely Pampering, Dove Oxygen Moisture

(Image representing the various products made by Dove)

(Source: https://blog.mapleholistics.com/)          (Source: https://www.shutterstock.com/)

Furthermore, damage control, instant and long lasting nourishment, zero frizz as well as dandruff control are the main features of the products introduced by Dove who has been continuously working in the direction of endorsing realistic beauty standards through its various social development programmes. Over the course of time, several hair problems were addressed by the Dove products including dull, rough, dry, fine, flat, frizzy and weak hair, hair loss, coloured hair, damaged hair, dandruff, split ends and itchy scalp. Recently Dove celebrated its 60th Anniversary wherein they renewed their commitment to women globally by launching the Dove Real Beauty Pledge, primarily consisting of 3 vows:

1. We always feature women, we never feature models
2. We portray women as they are in real life. We do not digitally distort our images
3. We are helping young people build self-esteem and positive body confidence

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I hope all my readers would have gained a lot of knowledge by reading this blog which I have tried my best to convey in the least words possible. Additionally, several GIFs and pictures have been added to make it look attractive to the audience. Thank you for your support.

Happy learning!

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