Consumer Behavior: Building Marketing Strategy 13th Edition by Delbert Hawkins, David Mothersbaugh

Exercise 21

Mind the Gap-The Real You and the Ideal You
The consumers' actual self is how they see themselves. The consumers' ideal self is how they would like to see themselves. A gap, sometimes small, sometimes big, may exist between the ideal self and the actual self, as discussed earlier in this chapter.
In 2004 Unilever, the parent company of Dove, conducted a survey of 3,200 women in 10 countries (the United States, Japan, Canada, Argentina, the Netherlands, Great Britain, France, Portugal, Italy, and Brazil) to understand what beauty means to women. The study revealed that only 2 percent of women saw themselves as beautiful. Ninety-eight percent of women's perception of their actual beauty fell short of their ideal. The study had identified a gap between women's ideal self-concept and actual self-concept. 27
Following on the heels of the study, Dove launched the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty to zero in on the gap. The campaign sought to broaden the definition of beauty beyond the stereotypic narrow confines. The campaign included billboard, print, TV, video, and digital advertisements. The billboards featured a woman and two tick box options such as "Fat or Fit " or "Withered or Wonderful " and invited passersby to visit a website to cast their votes. The print ads, "featuring six real women with real bodies and real curves," were "created to debunk the stereotype that only thin is beautiful." 28 The enormously successful campaign was showered with media attention and recognized with awards. 29 It also received criticism: the models "are still head-turners, with straight white teeth, no visible pores, and not a cell of cellulite.… [T]hey represent a beauty standard still idealized and, for the overwhelming majority of consumers, still pretty damn unattainable." 30
The next phase of the Dove Real Beauty campaign, Dove Real Beauty Sketch, was launched in 2013 as three- and seven-minute, web-only commercials. A forensic artist sketched two portraits of the person, one as she described herself concealed behind a screen out of the artist's sight-the real self-and another sketch as a stranger described her. The two sketches revealed that strangers saw these women as more attractive than women saw themselves. The video, capturing the heartfelt emotional response by the women-tears, surprise-when they saw the two portraits of themselves went viral and generated substantial buzz. 31 This campaign, like the previous ones, received both support-"a real expression of the insecurity of so many women who tend to sell themselves short''-and criticism-"pandering, soft-focus fake empowerment ads."
Dove is in the beauty business. Its Dove Campaign for Real Beauty focused on acceptance of real beauty beyond the stereotypical beauty ideal. Its Dove Sketch campaign showed women that they are more beautiful than they see themselves. Both campaigns have received accolades for bringing to light the overemphasis of the importance of physical beauty to women's self-concept. Both campaigns have been criticized for its focus on women's beauty and their underlying message of the importance of physical beauty. Hate it or love it, authentic or fake, the campaigns have sold a lot of Dove products.
Dove's parent company Unilever owns Slimfast and Axe. Does this make the Dove Real Beauty and Dove Sketch campaigns a sham Or can the campaigns still be authentic