A marketing communications campaign that did not align with industry codes of practice

Dove, one of Unilever’s leading beauty brands, has been in the industry for over 60 years. Starting life as a beauty cleansing bar, Dove is now the #1 dermatologist recommended brand in the US, Canada and France (Unilever, 2022).

In 2016, a study found that women and girls were more anxious about their bodies and image than ever before, with 71% of women and 67% of girls believing the media could do a much better job of portraying women of diverse physical appearances, ages, races, shapes, and sizes (Cision, 2016). Dove has positioned itself as a brand with this at its heart. A brand with a social mission to ensure the next generation has a “positive relationship with the way they look”, raising their self-esteem and ability to realise their full potential (Unilever, 2022).

Dove, also sees itself as a champion of diversity in the marketing industry helping to define global standards, centred on the promise that their advertising and marketing will always be 'legal, decent, honest and truthful' (Dove, 2022).

The campaign

In 2017, in celebration of their 60-year anniversary, Dove renewed their commitment to women by launching the ‘Dove Real Beauty Pledge’ (Unilever, 2017) consisting of 3 main elements:

- Always feature women, never models

- Portray women as they are in real life. Do not digitally distort images.

- Helping 40 million young people build self-esteem and positive body confidence.

However, rather than celebration, hashtags such as #BoycottDove; #DoveMustFall and #DoneWithDove began trending on social media after a new campaign appeared on their Facebook profile.

Figure 1: Dove Advert, 2017 (Goodfellow, 2017)

The advert, promoting their body wash product, featured a smiling black woman taking off her shirt to reveal a smiling white woman (Figure 1). The 3 second advertisement, as part of a longer ad, featured five women of different ethnicities.

The advert caused a wave of backlash with many claiming it had racist connotations and did not align with industry standards and regulations. More specifically, Rule 4.1 in the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct & Promotional Marketing (CAP) Code, which states: “Marketing communications must not contain anything that is likely to cause serious or widespread offence. Particular care must be taken to avoid causing offence on the grounds of age; disability; gender; gender reassignment; marriage and civil partnership; pregnancy and maternity; race; religion or belief; sex; and sexual orientation. Compliance will be judged on the context, medium, audience, product, and prevailing standards” (Advertising Standards Authority, 2022)

Industry Context

Four months before the launch of the Dove campaign, the UK witnessed one of its greatest modern disasters when Grenfell Tower, in West London, caught fire and killed 72 people (BBC News, 2019). Post Grenfell, there was a rise in public conversation surrounding racial disparities.

Conversations about how all businesses, sectors and brands should be more inclusive started to emerge, as consumers began to question the impact on the lack of diversity in business and marketing teams. In fact, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), received 2396 racism complaints between 2013 and 2018 about 956 different ads (Wilson, 2018).

Furthermore, the success of the Fenty Beauty’s 40+ shade release forced existing brands to correct the industry’s longstanding Eurocentric approach (Brinkhurst-Cuff, 2017). Whereas previously, it had been argued that deeper hues didn’t sell, the success of the Fenty Beauty launch proved inclusive products were in high demand (Panych, 2017).

This didn’t just happen in the beauty industry either, inclusive innovations were hitting the fashion and sports markets too, for example, Nike released the ‘Nike Pro Hijab’ made from light breathable fabric that wicks moisture to empower Muslim athletes (Nike, 2017).

There was simply no longer an excuse for brands to fail to get the basics, like inclusivity and representation, right. The ‘Fenty effect’ had changed industry standards, both for businesses and consumers. In fact, at this time Unilever joined the industry group ‘The Unstereotype Alliance’ (Unilever, 2017) that proactively looked for ways to make advertisements less stereotypical just months before the release of this Dove campaign.

Learning from the past

Once released, it was clear that the Dove campaign was both unethical and in breach of industry standards, and not for the first time.

Dove had previously been in trouble with “racist” advertising in 2011 when it released a body wash campaign that showed three women with a range of skin tones using the product. The advert showed the words “before” above the woman with darker skin and “after” above the woman with lighter skin. While some saw this as a display of multicultural diversity (Figure 2), many criticised the advert for being reminiscent of early 20th century adverts that encouraged the use of whitening products for ethnic communities (Figure 3). Dove released a statement in response that said "All three women are intended to demonstrate the 'after' product benefit. We do not condone any activity or imagery that intentionally insults any audience" (Held, 2017).

Figure 2: YouTube Commentary on the 2017 Dove advert (Business Insider, 2017).

Figure 3: An example of twitter backlash to the Dove 2017 advert (Thebe, 2017).

However, the same mistakes were made with this 2016 campaign. Not only does this paint a picture of repeated ethical issues in Dove’s marketing, but also highlights a direct contrast to the values Dove has built its brand on for the past decade. The campaigns look to undo all the work its ‘Real Beauty’ agenda has achieved, ultimately “undermining the very brand value for which Dove stands” (Dua, 2017).

Brand trust lives at the intersection where personal and societal issues converge, and where words are backed by action (Edelman, 2020). A failure, like this, to ensure your brand values are reflected in your actions could result in a reduction in consumer trust – a risk for brands of all sizes.

Action Taken

The 2017 advert was not subject to an ASA investigation, as Dove made the decision to pull the advert claiming they “deeply regretted the offense it caused” (Dove, 2017). However, this decision poses more ethical questions. On the one hand, the removal of the advert was ethical as it prevented causing anyone further offense or distress. On the other hand, the model who featured in the campaign criticised Dove for pulling the advert early and preventing a true investigation as “it left no room for the public to get the full story” claiming that while she thinks Dove had good intentions, she could understand why people were upset and “the fact that this could have happened, should have been discussed” (BBC News, 2017).

Despite the Fenty effect, no organisation is perfect when it comes to tackling racism in their businesses. However, there are steps that Dove can take to ensure that these ethical issues aren’t repeated (Joseph, 2020), including:

- Educating yourself and your teams

- Speaking out against issues

- Taking action

- Looking at the boards you have, what is the make-up of your teams?

Only 12.9% of employees in the ad industry are from a black or ethnic minority background (Wilson, 2018). Kubi Springer, founder of ‘She Builds Brands’ believes this lack of diversity in advertising teams can result in things being ‘missed’ (Wilson, 2018) stating that ‘"You need people at management and senior manager level that are diverse - and that's both ethnicity, as well as the LGBT community, as well as women who will say 'Actually this might offend a particular demographic and maybe you should think about this again'." These are exactly the steps that consumers expect Dove to take with many calling on Dove to look at addressing better representation within their marketing team, and in house decision makers (Susan, 2017).

Why is it important these steps are taken? Because unethical marketing can result in a reduction in trust from consumers (Forsey, 2020). Consumers are 4.5 times more likely to trust brands that address racial issues than those that don’t (Williams, 2020) moreover after a brand displays unethical behaviour or suffers a controversy 40% said they would stop buying from that brand altogether (Data Marketing Association, 2020). With 81% of consumers using trust as a major purchasing factor (Data Marketing Association, 2020) losing it could be costly, both to Dove’s business and reputation.

A breach of regulations?

While an advert causing offense to “some people is not grounds for finding a marketing communication in breach of the Code” (Advertising Standards Authority, 2022), it’s clear that this advert was both unethical and in breach of rule 4.1 in the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising and Direct & Promotional Marketing (CAP) Code (Advertising Standards Authority, 2022).

Looking more closely, it is the context of this advert that allows this conclusion to be drawn. The ASA state that as a “proactive regulator” they monitor evolving societal values and prevailing standards to determine the interpretation and application of the rules (Advertising Standards Authority, 2021). During a time of heightened conversation around racial inequalities, it would be fair to assume that the ASA would use this as justification for a ruling.

Furthermore, the advert was showcased on social media pages, and as social networks only have an minimum age of 13 years old (Cawthorne, 2018), Dove also has failed in its social responsibility to protect young people from offensive content.

Therefore, it can be concluded that this advert caused widespread offence regarding its negative racial connotations. However, as the campaign was removed before an ASA ruling, this conclusion has been drawn using guidance provided by the ASA and was ultimately exasperated by the fact the brand has a running history of adverts in breach of the same code in a similar way.

The Advertising industry has the power to shape or break positive or negative stereotypes (Advertising Standards Authority, 2021) and Dove has committed to a timely and independent review into how this advert was approved.

1633 words

Figures

Figure 1 - GOODFELLOW, Jessica. 2017. ‘Dove admits it ‘missed the mark’ with whitewashing ad’. The Drum 8 October [online]. Available at: https://www.thedrum.com/news/2017/10/08/dove-admits-it-missed-the-mark-with-whitewashing-ad[accessed 19th October 2021]

Figure 2 - BUSINESS INSIDER. 2017. People are accusing this Dove ad of being racist [advertisement]. Available at: https://youtu.be/zkIrbVycAeM [accessed 18th October 2021]

Figure 3 - THEBE, Daniel K. [@danielkthebe] 2017. The historical context of @Dove @Unilever adverts over a century #DoveAd #doveisracist #Dove, October 7 [Twitter post] Available at: https://twitter.com/danielkthebe/status/917110859549290497?s=20&t=ZBIxlmPlUW76bTNcoQtN_Q [accessed 18th October 2021]

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