Dove: Marketing Decisions and Future Goals

Unilever’s decision to go from global decentralization to creating Masterbrands on its journey of a path for growth, is what allowed Dove to create a new stance in its evolution of branding. In the very beginning of Dove’s advertising, the focus was primarily on its functionality as a product. However, Dove knew that in order to fulfill the Masterbrand role it must expand towards supporting a point of view that would underpin all of its products, but also create differentiation from other brands. In doing so, Dove created the “Campaign For Real Beauty” which served as the evolving point for Dove as a brand.

This new campaign raised awareness and created positivity for women by redefining beauty and challenging the stereotypes society constantly pins onto them. From this, Dove has been deemed to value its consumer’s opinions, earn their trust, and keep them open minded to new ideas. Despite its major achievements, Dove’s bold moves in advertising and promoting its new message of making more women feel beautiful has endangered the company as a whole. The risks include: being viewed as the brand for fat, socially unaccepted women; subverting the dreams of consumers; seen as objectifying women; sustainability of the overall campaign; and backlash on social media. The question is, how can Dove continue to keeping moving up the ladder as a personal care brand and avoid the risks at the same time?

Closing the gender gap between Dove products will help advance the company by allowing it to wander deeper into the men’s personal care market. Dove has the potential to create a line of men’s products that would broaden its target audience and definitely make the brand more versatile. Dove should also look into focusing more on the younger generations for a target audience. Generation Z is the age that is growing up around technology, which exposes kids to the unrealistic views of what they should look like according to pop culture. This means that children are more susceptible to becoming insecure of their image rooting at a very young age.

Providing generation z with media content that is educational on the importance of positive self image and confidence can prevent the amount of kids who grow up already facing insecurity and anxiety. Doing so can also influence the same crowd to stay loyal to the Dove brand once they become young adults because it has created an intimate relationship with them starting at such a young age. Another example would be possibly teaming up with nonprofits, such as Girl Scouts, to educate the younger generations on what exactly it means to have self esteem, and the importance of it.

Focusing on the future of Dove’s subsequent consumers will aid in continuing its advocacy of changing society’s view of beauty. Solidifying their stance on the importance of self esteem and inner beauty to these children will sooner or later eliminate the risks they face as a company overall, because the idea of self care is a topic that is gaining more attention than anything else for women right now. Another way that Dove could continue expanding in the future is by becoming more environmentally sustainable and aware of how its products are affecting the company’s carbon footprint. Dove’s first move towards a cleaner environment could be making packaging out of recycled, compostable plastic. Another way is to encourage their buyers to recycle the product containers themselves. They could do this by putting something on the labels that would educate and encourage buyers to do so.

Dove in the past has focused a lot on women in America, which could limit their number of consumers. Expanding their focus onto women of other regions in the world could help extend their message to a larger group. For example, in other parts of the world such as Asia, skin complexion is a huge controversy for women. Advocating that women of all complexions are beautiful, targeting those regions specifically, could give Dove the endless success and authenticity it aims for. In order for Dove to keep growing as a company, it has to stay consistent in providing its target audience with inspiration and encouragement of believing that beauty comes in all forms.