In 2020, Dove cracked the top 10 list for one of the most positively talked about brands in both offline and online conversations. The only brand to do both. Dove has a long history of spurring conversations with their customers, most people remember their body positivity campaign back in 2004.
In fact, Dove’s success stories started 20 years ago when they released a report called ‘The real truth about Beauty’. The global study found that only 2% of women define themselves as beautiful. In a decade dominated by lip fillers and Photoshop, part of Dove’s success was due to its use of stories that focused on a different idea: natural beauty. (Ladies, can I get an Amen?!)
Dove, successfully identified a kernel, built a Trojan Horse and leveraged existing stories.
📟 1. Establish your key message
First, Dove established and reinforced its central theme of natural beauty. Dove’s global study found that 2/3s of women believe that media sets unrealistic standards of beauty that most women could never achieve. In response, Dove launched its campaign for natural beauty with the video ‘Evolution’. The video reveals the great lengths taken by the cosmetics industry to manufacture impossible standards of beauty.
The video costs over $100k to make and generated 16 million views, tripling the amount of traffic to Dove’s website. In Q2 of 2005 after launching the campaign, sales increased by 11.4% over 3x the industry average. The campaign also won a number of prestigious awards like the Grand Effie and was dubbed as the best campaign of the past 20 years by PR Week.
🎠 2. Build your Trojan Horse
Second, Dove built a Trojan Horse. By centring their campaign on a thought-provoking topic of unrealistic beauty norms, Dove brought a private, widely agreed upon issue out into the open. Not only did this foster positive social discussion, but it also brought attention to the brand. When people discuss the controversial topic of real beauty, Dove is just a thought away. The campaign served as Dove’s Trojan Horse to increase advocacy and adoption.
The firm supercharged the Trojan Horse by creating emotionally-driven, shareable content. Like in Dove’s ‘Real Beauty Pledge’, the brand promised to only use real stories from real women, no models, zero touchups and photos needed to reflect diversity. The pledge created feelings of inspiration, empowerment and excitement, all high-arousal emotions that sparked conversations about authenticity and Dove.
Dove’s novel approach to advertising drew attention to the brand. By making a commitment to campaigns with real beauty at the centre and leveraging high-arousal emotions, people continue to talk about real beauty and Dove, long after the initial campaign launch. Since the ‘Real Beauty Pledge’ Dove has increased its brand value but almost $1 billion!
They also created another Trojan Horse called the ‘Dove Self-Esteem Project’. With this initiative, Dove offered practical value in the form of resources which users can download and share. This included a conversation guide to positive body confidence and a list of ways to prevent cyberbullying. This project significantly increased word-of-mouth for Dove.
In the 11 years since its launch, 625,000 teachers have facilitated Dove’s self-esteem workshops, reaching almost 20 million students and 1.5 million parents worldwide to engage in online content across 138 countries. While the workshops provided valuable education and character development, they also brought attention to the brand. The Self-Confidence Kit for instance, proudly displays Dove’s logo on the cover which allows the brand to educate its audience and promote itself.
👯♀️ 3. Use existing stories
Third, Dove leveraged existing stories that women care about, relying on real customer testimonials over fabricated advertising. Around 69% of women don’t feel represented enough in advertising, film or tv, so Dove created a platform to address it called ‘Real Beauty Productions’, an in-house production studio in collaboration with Shonda Rhimes.
Dove shines a spotlight on issues women care about, like building self-esteem and the impacts of social media, produced by an all-female crew. The project invited women to submit their stories on the website and received over 4000 submissions from real women, garnering over 3.3 billion earned media impressions with more than 26 million views.
For brands wishing to leverage the power of storytelling in their strategy to increase adoption and advocacy, Dove offers a few key learnings.
🔑 The best stories don’t focus on the companies, instead, they select the important and relevant kernels that elevate the customer. Dove’s campaign directly benefits the brand, but its main focus is to raise attention to stories that matter to its consumers.
🔑 Once you build a Trojan Horse with a kernel that resonates with your audience, think about additional ways you can provide value. From workshops to films to award-winning ads, Dove stays true to its kernel of real beauty.
🔑 Further elevate your brand stories with other components such as emotion and practical value to make their stories memorable and sharable.
The strategies that make products and services catch on, cause stories to catch on too.
See you next week!
Have a contentful day 🌞
Emma