Target Market of Dove Soap
Creating a soap that did not dry the skin and instead hydrated it. Unilever, a British multinational consumer products business, owns the Dove personal care brand in the United States. Its goods are made in a variety of locations across the world. The items are available for women, men, and newborns. Dove swiftly established a foothold in the soap sector, garnering consumer confidence with high-quality, dependable goods. In this article, we’ll look into Target Market Dove soap, in particular, to see how this company remained so popular and effective.
We will start by analyzing some of the most famous campaigns arranged by the Dove soap company:
Unilever created the Dove Effort for Real Beauty in 2004 as a global marketing campaign to instill self-confidence in women and young children. Ogilvy & Mather, Edelman Public Relations, Harbinger Communications (in Canada), and other consultants were Dove’s campaign partners. The “Evolution” campaign was a part of the entire initiative.
“Beyond Compare: Women Photographers on Real Beauty” was a photographic exhibit presented by Dove, Ogilvy, & Mather in 2004. The exhibition showcased 67 female photographers’ work and inspired the Real Beauty campaign. The Dove Real Beauty campaign was designed in 2004 as part of a three-year creative strategy research project directed by Joah Santos and collaborated with three institutions. Ogilvy & Mather Düsseldorf and London conceptualized the campaign.
The first part of the campaign consisted of a series of billboard advertising displayed initially in Germany and the United Kingdom and then around the world. The commercials used images of ordinary women (rather than professional models) taken by Rankin, a well-known portrait photographer. Passers-by were encouraged to vote on whether a specific model was “Fat or Fab” or “Wrinkled or Wonderful,” with the results constantly updated and shown on the billboard itself.
The “Dove Report,” a business – research commissioned by Unilever to “establish a new concept of beauty would liberate women from self-doubt and inspire them to embrace their true beauty,” accompanied the billboard commercials.
The Dove campaign’s core message was that women’s distinctive variations should be appreciated, not disregarded. That physical appearance should be turned from a cause of fear to a source of confidence.
It was touted as a skincare bar with a 25% cleansing cream content. The brand had grown to be worth $200 million by the early 1990s and is now valued at about 4 billion dollars. Their success may be credited mainly to their brand creation, emphasizing women’s empowerment.
In June 2016, Dove arranged another campaign, ‘My Beauty my Say’. My Beauty My Say is a campaign that contains a series of short movies that tell the experiences of women who questioned and conquered other people’s perceptions of their appearance. Dove Canada’s YouTube account was used to debut the promotional videos.
“The primary theme of My Beauty, My Say is that a woman’s beauty should be recognized on her own terms, not on the terms of others,” says Diane Laberge, Marketing Director at Unilever Canada. “We aim to provide all women a platform to speak out against beauty boundaries via the experiences of the individuals portrayed and our campaign.”
The Dove Self-Esteem Project is a worldwide Dove effort that began with The Campaign for Real Beauty. Its purpose is to teach and inspire the next generation of girls to connect with beauty and help them develop self-esteem, allowing them to reach their most significant potential in life.
The Dove brand’s success was not accidental. It was based on research and used a variety of approaches to learning about the problems women have with Dove products and their perceptions of beauty. Expert advice was used to enhance customer research.
For example, the Dove Self-Esteem Program has an 11-member Global Advisory Board. The brand has the capacity and motivation to excite, access creative thinking worldwide, and then sell the most incredible ideas.
In addition, following an ambitious worldwide growth, the brand, which was previously just a factor in a few nations, now has a presence in over 80 countries. However, the commercial plan would not have been as successful without the brand development effort to back the services and promote the greater Real Beauty mission.
Now, let’s find out what is the positioning strategy of Dove.
When Lever Brothers’ first Dove ‘beauty bar’ first on the market in the United States in 1957, commercial messaging focused on the idea that Dove was much better for your skin’ than soap owing to its mildness and presence of ‘one-quarter washing cream.’ Taglines like ‘Suddenly soap is old-fashioned!’ and ‘Dove creams your skin as you wash’ stressed the product’s point of difference, along with its revolutionary curved form and simple blue-and-gold packaging that still features the original dove bird design.
The Dove bar was judged to be gentler than other prominent soaps in a 1979 independent assessment. This discovery was featured in several newspaper advertisements, with slogans like: ‘Dermatologists have inserted something extraordinarily potent in this face cleanser.’ ‘Their faith.’ This was the first time in Dove advertising that a scientific fact was presented, showing a progressive shift in the way women were treated.
Seven female faces are squeezed tightly together in one black-and-white print ad published by Ogilvy in Canada in the early 1980s. ‘Put your best face forward with Dove,’ says the slogan.
Although Dove has had a lot of various slogans, we will concentrate on “put your best face forward with Dove”.
Before we dig deeper into the analysis of the message behind the slogan, I would like to mention that this phrase is actually a malaphor “put your best face forward”. To be clear, a malaphor is a grammatical blunder that occurs when two identical figures of speech are combined, resulting in a nonsensical conclusion.
To better understand what the ‘original’ malaphor means, let’s imagine a scene.
So, you are invited to an event regarding some business and marketing stuff. The speaker discusses the significance of effectively translating marketing messaging into other languages, and he encourages the audience to “put your best face forward.”
This is a clever combination of “put your best foot forward” (act or seem your best, or strive to create a good impression) and “put on a good face” (To act as though a particular situation is not as undesirable or grim as it really is).
It’s also possible that “put a grin on someone’s face” (make someone happy) is in play. I suppose the term “place,” which appears in both idioms, is to blame for the confusion. The favorable terms “good” and “best” may have also contributed to the mental jumble.
Now, if we go back to the slogan created by Dove, we can assume that they are trying to raise self-love and self-confidence among those who are using Dove products. And as Dove offers beauty and self-care products, it becomes more logical and more precise why they used the phrase ‘best face’ in their slogan. Dove makes its users believe that they can fully trust Dove about beauty and self-care.
Last but not least, to find out the targeted segment of Dove, we will watch and analyze one of their commercials.
So, the commercial is built upon one of the campaigns made by Dove, “Inner Critic”. The campaign’s main goal was to help women have a good connection with beauty so that they could achieve their maximum potential in terms of happiness, confidence, and success.
The advertisement is based on the survey that Dove came up with, and it consisted of two questions. The participants had to tell the audience what they dislike about themselves and what features they find beautiful or attractive. The audience who watches the commercial most probably will think that all of those women are beautiful and unique in their own way.
However, as we can see, the majority of the participants were complaining either about some of their body parts or they could just say that they did not like their bodies. Though I believe their attitude to themselves was a bit too harsh.
And that makes me think that all of them had some kind of image of a perfect body shape and appearances in their minds. And because of it, they never really realized how pretty and attractive they already are (which is actually a pretty big problem among today’s generation).
So, based on some of the characteristics we highlighted here, we can assume that the highlighted segment of Dove is Traditionalists.
So, who are the Traditionalists?
Lifestyle. Attitude and Values.
- The main focus is on guiding their family through life.
Traditionalists have abandoned their goals to advance in their careers. They think it is their responsibility to properly nurture the children. And fulfilling one’s job is far more essential than living for one’s own pleasure and accomplishments.
Their objectives have been concentrated on the children. It is critical to raise and teach children how to succeed in life. Traditionalists are rigorous with their children, yet it might be difficult to tell them no.
- Food has a significant impact.
Traditionalists ensure that the family’s food is fresh and of excellent quality, but they aren’t obsessed with organic and ecologically friendly food.
- They are dedicated to their task.
Working in an ethical atmosphere appeals to traditionalists: “It’s necessary to live a hardworking and honest life!”. They like being members of a ‘team’ and want acknowledgement from their coworkers.
Leisure Activities.
- Spending time with their family is their favourite hobby.
Cooking for the family is a pastime for traditionalists. At least once a year, their families come together for a vacation. They prefer returning to locations they are familiar with. When it comes to holidays, relaxing is always a priority for traditionalists.
- They prefer to spend their evenings at home alone.
Traditionalists seldom leave the house, neither for amusement nor for cultural touring. They do, however, purchase a large number of movies (e.g., family films, children’s flicks, and cartoons) to watch in the evening. They enjoy having guests around and entertaining them at home.
Brand Usage and Adoption.
– Spending time with their family is their favourite hobby.
Cooking for the family is a pastime for traditionalists. At least once a year, their families come together for a vacation. They prefer returning to locations they are familiar with. When it comes to holidays, relaxing is always a priority for traditionalists.
– They prefer to spend their evenings at home alone.
Traditionalists seldom leave the house, neither for amusement nor for cultural touring.
They do, however, purchase a large number of movies (e.g., family films, children’s flicks, and cartoons) to watch in the evening. They enjoy having guests around and entertaining them at home.
And there you have it: Dove’s Target Market, an extraordinarily lovely corporation. We took a closer look at its marketing strategies in this article to understand how it maintains its popularity. We looked at one of its ads and slogans in particular. We also looked at a specific commercial that revealed the Dove-targeted segment.
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