Month: September 2010

(2008 campaign)

Since 1995, Comptoir des Cotonniers’ creations (French Brand) have countered the trend while creating comfortable clothes that can be worn for several seasons. In 1998, it launched it’s first Mother- Daughter collection, without changing the brand’s philosophy, but only opening-it up: dress women who want to be fashionable, but this time, with their family.

The brand’s great awareness is partly due to its campaign involving women selected on casting with their daughter, real people, not models. (A common key point with Dove’s campaigns – see post below). Age or beauty is not a criteria in itself, the brand wants, first, to highlight this precisous relationship.

Indeed, this marketing strategy is a great success, and is very well-thought: when a mom walks in a store with her daughter, she is not looking only at clothes for herself, but also for her daughter. It is a 2-in-1 marketing sale strategy, where the brand can easily doubles the number of customers it is targeting, in an easy way: “Come-in and shop with your family, there are clothes for everyone, and they are fashionable, timeless and trendy”. Below are some of their adds frequently found in Women’s French magazines:

“Pure and Simple”

In 2004, Dove launched a campaign called the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty with a mission : “Make more women feel beautiful every day by widening stereotypical views of beauty”.

In order to support and illustrate their campaign, Dove launched an advertising campaign in 2006 called Dove Evolution. In this video, a normal woman comes in, gets her makeup and hair done, a picture is taken, and with the use of “Photoshopping”, her neck becomes longer, her chicks thinner, her eyes wider, and finally, her new modified picture ends up on a billboard; but the photo of this girl doesn’t look much alike the real girl. The video ends with a little message that says “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted”.

When I first saw this video, on a video-sharing website, for the first time I thought, good, at least one brand has the courage denounce this type of marketing, where they make their customer believe that if you buy this or that product, you will become more beautiful, or thinner, or more fit looking. Indeed, many brands today expose their customer to “fake-results” when displaying an add where the girl has been all maked-up, and the photo as been modified.

No wonder teenagers become so self-conscious at such an early age that we would have never have thought possible. At 12, they already worry about their clothes, how do they look, how much they weight…which sometimes leads to bad extremes!

Using natural beauty with divers shapes, sizes and ages, is a very ingenious marketing strategy, that also contains a social and political aspect. I consider Dove to be a first-time leader in “natural marketing” with a sustainable advantage that no other brands have yet been able to compete with.

Dove Evolution Video

We should also take into consideration that this video has been seen more than 3 millions times, only a month after it came out, and has also won many awards (Cannes Lions Grand Prix awards, Epica d’Or) and has been broadcast on many TV shows such as Good Morning America and Today Show. Don’t you think that this demonstrates how marketing can denounce cultural and sociological problems, and bring a solution to them? How many people, do you think, see beauty differently today by the simple viewing of this video? I know I do !