Interesting/crap ad from Dove
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0JF4QxPpvM&feature=player_embedded
I guess its heart is in the right place, but these are my problems with it:
1. As I pointed out on this blog about six years ago, Unilever, the company that owns Dove, also owns Lynx, possibly the greatest objectifiers of women in the history of mankind. So this is just a giant corporation doing whatever it thinks it has to do to sell stuff. Unilever obviously doesn’t really care about ‘real beauty’, so this just smacks of money grabbing bullshit. I’d rename it the campaign for real avarice, or the campaign for real condescension.
2. So we’re talking about the artifical enhancement of ‘real beauty’ are we? And where do you draw the line with that? Make-up? Plastic surgery? Flattering clothes? I guess you could say that women make their own minds up about those decisions but the effect is the same: woman sees other woman with great tits/big eyes/small bum, doesn’t take into account the make-up/surgery/clothing involved, feels a little less good about herself as a consequence. Same as retouching.
3. No art director who retouches women will give a shit about this. All that will happen is that they’ll get mildly irritated.
Otherwise, great.
I downloaded an app and when I clicked the button this Photoshop action reverted to its original state – PR.
This is made for Cannes and nothing else. It has absolutely no pretensions of belonging to the real world.
I bet the Dutch judges think it’s groovy, too.
Client: Make her look less fat.
AD: No.
Client: You’re fired.
–
Yes AD’s do it – but they’re being told/paid to do it.
So they posted it on Reddit, got 0 upvotes, 7 dubious comments. Of which one is clearly from a Dove-owned account.
Then it was red-flagged by Reddit for violating their terms: http://www.reddit.com/r/photoshop/comments/19btbg/free_photoshop_action_i_created_for_use_in/
Yet they still made an awards entry video for it.
Weird.
Surely the client’s responsibility is to ensure their products by way of the advertising is seen in the light appropriate for the intended audience…and that’s it?
Brilliant, it encapsulates everything I hate in advertising nowadays : Pointless useless digital tool, aiming the wrong target, pretending to speak frankly to real people and expecting to create a buzz that’ll never come.
A real case study !!!
A Dove ad aimed at…Art Directors. Brilliant.
Since when has Dove’s target audience been slightly overweight middle aged blokes?
@Anonymouse get’s it spot on. It’s just more Cannes fodder that will probably do really well because it’s seen to be doing something good.
How much of Dove’s target market is made up of Art Directors, Graphic Designers and Photo Retouchers?
I’m guessing next to nothing.
And even if they did give a shit about promoting body image following downloading a scam photoshop filter, there’s nothing here that would make them want to buy more Dove.
As far as I can see there is absolutely nothing right with this.
I really liked it. It probably cost peanuts to make, it’s sitting on a blog that will get a few thousand views to add to it’s couple of hundred thousand views and it highlights a valid social issue that we as an industry have contributed to creating.
Given that it’ll join lots of other work made specifically for awards shows and be viewed by thousands of it’s intended target audience in award annuals I think it’s pretty good piece of creative thinking.
Btw the ad is as boring as fuck.
Johnny Foreigner there succinctly sums up why advertising is truly fucked. Well done sir.
And for fuck’s sake, learn how to use an apostrophe.
Ogilvy don’t half churn out some scam nowadays.
This is utter shit and advertising at its worst. Nothing clever about this and Unilever are total cunts.
The recruitment companies all seem to be posting
Links to it on twitter – muppets
They should win a Grand Prix, to have the news talking about the idea, and then have an actual impact. And then they should create another case study and win a creative effectiveness lion.