This is a response to Alice Wo’s article: Dove’s fake beauty campaign

In her blog, Alice draws attention to two issues with this campaign. The first being the fact that it is clearly a marketing strategy in order to gain loyal customers with that feel-good factor. Most importantly, it actually contradicts their earlier statements about self esteem and redefining beauty by magnifying the fact that these women are incredibly at awe and overly delighted to see that other people think they are pretty.

While the problems that surround this campaign are already quite expertly being taken apart by eighteen year olds struggling in university, I’d like to add to the conversation by bringing in another point.

Dove’s brand image is all about true beauty and loving yourself. They have women of colour (sort of) in most of their ads, women who are stick thin, women who are chubby, and they are all labeled as equally beautiful. They want to build your self-esteem and worth as a woman by telling you that you are beautiful.

Here’s the thing: Dove is owned by Unilever. You know who else Unilever owns? Axe.

Yes, Axe, the bane of everyone’s existence, save for delusional boys in middle school locker rooms. Their campaign is based solely on the idea that wearing Axe will get hordes of gorgeous, buxom, white, blondes with perfect tanned scantily clad bodies to fall deeply in love with you.

Therein lies the problem: an inconsistency in branding. Yes, Unilever is a blanket company that owns many brands, but I find it hard to buy into one brand when another is saying something completely different.