dove, lynx, inconsistency, no chance of me working for unilever ever again

October 18th

One of the recent triumphs of the marketing and branding arts has been Dove and it's Campaign For Real Beauty. Bold strategic thinking and insightful executions which have struck a chord with many. Dove has successfully connected itself to global concern about the excesses of the beauty industry and put itself in the middle of the debate about the unrealistic and exploitative portrayal of women in advertising.

A similarly admirable campaign is the energetic, larger than life masculinity of Lynx (also known as Axe in many places). Again, there's a smart strategic vision and the creative work is inventive and original. Lynx has tapped into a young male attitude that's not afraid to take pleasure in images of beautiful, sexy women in ridiculously revealing clothes.

Both brands have been given very clear positionings. You get a real sense of world-view, of purpose, of mission. You can imagine the world headquarters of both Dove and Lynx, the kind of people who work there, their values, their beliefs.

So I know what Dove believes in, and I know what Lynx believes in. I just have no idea what Unilever believes in. Because, of course, Unilever is responsible for both Dove and Lynx. And the values they've attached to Dove and Lnyx are inherently contradictory; you can't imagine anyone in the real world espousing both. While I suspect there was a genuinely felt spark of purpose and mission in the origins of the Dove work it's been swamped by the built-in contradictions of a multibrand organisation.

Because I'm not saying that anyone's done anything particularly wrong here, we've all found ourselves in similar cantradictions. It's just that the branding model we all work with - the idea that a brand can be constructed as a fictional entity, appropriating whatever values seem convenient and relevant - doesn't work in the age we're living in. Our customers are smart and informed, information is easy to get and people are coming more and more to care about the origins of the stuff they buy. If you're going to claim big, meaningful values, you're going to have to live them, not just assert them.

I don't know if huge numbers of Dove consumers are troubled by this contradiction. Probably not. It's probably not as big a deal as I'm making out, but it's a conversation that's wandering around the blogosphere, and when I told a friend of mine about it she said she felt fooled by Unilever. Society has raised the bar on us again, they want us to mean what we say and, perhaps more significantly, what we imply. Hopefully this'll mean some serious conversations in brand-owning boardrooms, as they work out if they actually, personally, believe in the values they're espousing.

Comments

[Ben]

I don't know if Unilever will ever hire you again, but I do reckon your Campaign articles would be better if they let you write the headlines as opposed to a subbie.

Not that there's anything wrong with your Campaign articles or anything.

[Charles Frith]

I guess contradiction is a part of life and we are all guilty of it.

It's not being aware of it or prepared to work it out that is most pernicious.

I think Unilever could turn this to their advantage in due course. Campaign for real beauty is a beauty of an idea.

[Rye Clifton]

Here is a little video I put together that illustrates that point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwDEF-w4rJk

-Rye

[mbd]

I guess the question is will consumers ever expect the same sincerity and purpose out of brands as they expect out of real life people? As brands try to establish more meaningful relationships with people, this could be a problem. But, if people won't ever truly have a deep relationship with an inanimate. non-human object (a la Russell's entry on robots), then does deep does sincerity go?

[Chris Reed]

Are you writing things for Ad Age now, as well as Campaign? Very... prescient

[the hidden persuader]

Women praise sincerity (so they say). Men (especially teenagers) praise "dishonest" fun. Unilever = consistent product segmentation according to one's needs and attitudes. "What you need you'll hear from us" should be Lever's motto:)