By now I'm guessing a lot of you must have seen this ad. Click below to watch Evolution, a Dove "film".
What do you think of it, in light of our readings and screenings so far? Is this ad still pushing forward consumerism and ideals of female beauty, only doing it more subtlely? I've heard many people praise this ad, but I'm still not sure how I feel about it. Sure workshops are great... but sponsored workshops? Think I'd have to attend one to make my mind up.
The Land of the Free. The Home of the Brand.
5 comments:
I see no one has posted anything yet.
Okay - here is the question:
What is the difference between advertising and branding?
This won't answer your question per se, but I just think this ad is a great example of branding, and Dove trying to set itself apart as the brand for "inner beauty" by funding research on women's self-esteem and their notions of beauty. At a time when a lot of people have critiqued the beauty/cosmetics industry's way of objectifying women and/or telling them they're never good enough, this campaign and Dove's new image might gain them support, if not sympathy, from a lot of ordinary women who are fed up with a certain ideal advertisers claim they should try to live up to.
Well I think the basic message is that they are a company that sees beyond the "society image" of beauty by trying to show women how to be beautiful in everyday life, yet we don't see exactly how they will accompish this. Sure, there is a workshop, but we don't know what happens there, since they don't tell us. Dove has branded itself as a company that believes in "pure, honest beauty from within". It's not a horrible thing as a lot of companies these days are doing the opposite, yet the primary goal is to sell their products, so they will use the approach they think works the best that will set them apart from the others. Just my thoughts.
Mexico is not as multicultural as Canada. But still, we have a very clear social division. There are Mexicans that have dark skin(Walt Disney´s racist cartoon;Speedy González), and there are some other Mexicans that have white skin.
As you may already know, Spain conquered “Tenochtitlán” in 1523. And because of that cultural fusion and other social events, we as Mexicans haven’t found our identity.
There are some studies and essays like “El laberinto de la soledad” from Octavio Paz that try to find our origin and the reason for being the way we are.
In Mexico, the beauty is exactly the same as in Canada. A “beautiful” woman has to be blond with blue or green eyes, white skin, tall, slim and so forth.
Dove has a similar campaign, but it is a bit different. It shows you several pictures of different women. (over-weighted, dark skin women)
And at the lower right end of the billboard, it says ; ¿Quién te dijo que no eres bonita?
I think that this campaign is a start of something, but it is not strong enough to change a social reality, and even an International reality.
We have to be responsible consumers, and it is up to us that we, little by little, change the market.
I know this change is not going to happen tomorrow, but maybe one day…
Alfreddo, the campaign you're talking about we had here too. Maybe 1 or 2 years ago. This whole thing was started with Dove's "campaign for real beauty", based on a survey they did around the world. So this is a global thing. It's reinforcing the idea that our beauty resides in our uniqueness, but then, they go and use the same images around the world. I find it ironic, and it reminds me of Apple telling us we can all be unique and standout by ALL using THE SAME commodities.
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