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TASK PERFORMANCE ON GLOBAL MARKETING

NAME: SECTION: DATE: SCORE:

Dove – Building a Global Brand

In 2003, Dove was not a beauty brand; it was a bar of soap that was positioned and sold differently in different
markets. Unilever, the company that marketed Dove, was a storied consumer product multinational with global
reach, a strong position in fast-growing developing nations, and a reputation for customizing products to
conditions prevailing in local markets. In India, for example, woman often oil their hair before washing it, so
Western shampoos that do not remove the oil have not sold well. Unilever reformulated its shampoo for India
and was rewarded with market leadership. But sometimes Unilever went too far. It used different formulations
for shampoo in Hong Kong and mainland China for example, even though hair and washing habits were very
similar in both markets. Unilever also often varied the packaging and marketing message for similar products,
even for its most commoditized products. The company tended to exaggerate complexity, and by 2003 its
financial performance was suffering.
Six years later Unilever’s financial performance had improved, in no small part because it shifted towards a
more global emphasis, and the Dove brand led the way. The Dove story dates to 2003 when the global brand
director, Sylvia Lagnado, who was based in New York, decided to change the positioning of Dove from a
product-based position to an emphasis on an entire beauty brand. The basic message: the brand should stand
for the real beauty of all women. Dove’s mission was to make women feel more beautiful every day by widening
the stereotypical definition of beauty and inspiring them to take care of themselves.
But how was this mission to be executed? Following a series of workshops held around the globe that asked
brand managers and advertising agency partners to find ways to communicate an inclusive definition of beauty,
the Canadian brand manager asked 67 female photographers to submit work that best reflects real beauty. The
photographs are stunning portraits not of models, but of women from all walks of life that come in all shapes,
sizes, and ages. The project led to a coffee table book and traveling exhibition, called the Dove Photo Tour,
which garnered a lot of positive press in Canada. Sylvia Lagnado realized that the Canadians were on to
something. Around the same time, the German office of Unilever’s advertising agency, Ogilvy and Mather
Worldwide, came up with a concept for communicating “real beauty” based on photographs showing ordinary
women, instead of skinny models, in their underwear. The original German advertisements quickly make their
way to the United Kingdom, where a London newspaper article stated that the campaign was not advertising; it
was politics. Sylvia Lagnado was not surprised by this reaction. Research she commissioned showed that only
2 percent of women worldwide considered themselves beautiful and that half thought they weighed too much.
In 2004, the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty launched globally. This campaign was a radical shift for Unilever
and the Dove brand, which until now had left marketing in the hands of local brand managers. Nevertheless,
the Real Beauty campaign was tweaked to take local sensibilities into account. For example, it was deemed
better not to show women touching each other in America, while in Latin America tactile women did not shock
anybody, so touching was seen as okay.
In Canada, the campaign opened up with billboard “tick box” advertisements on real women in their underwear
that invited people to call an 800 number and voteon provocative options, such as “Fat/Fabulous?” The votes
were tallied and displayed in real time on the billboards. This created a huge buzz, and the technique was
quickly adopted in other markets, such as the United States. As the campaign gained traction and a positive
groundswell of media attention occurred (in the United States, for example, the Dove Women were invited to
the Oprah Winfrey show). Unilever soon extended the Dove product line to include skin creams, shampoos, and
shower gels. In 2005, the campaign was followed by the launch of the Dove “self-esteem fund,” a worldwide
campaign to persuade girls and young women to embrace a more positive image of themselves. Unilever also
made an online video, posted on YouTube, called “Onslaught,” which is criticalof the beauty industry and ends
with slogans such as “Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does.” Another video, “Evolution,” shows
how the face of a girl can be changed, partly through computer graphics, to create an image of beauty. The

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video ends with the tag line, “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.” Made for very little money, the
YouTube videos created a viral buzz around the Dove campaign that helped transform it into one of Unilever’s
leading brands. By its use of such techniques, the campaign for Real Beauty has become a model for how to
revitalize and build a new global brand.

Questions (4 items x 10 points):

1. Historically Unilever has had a reputation for customizing its product offerings and marketing messages to
local market conditions. What are the benefits of this approach? What are the drawbacks?
2. Why do you think Unilever chose to move away from its local customization strategy, and tried to position
Dove as a global brand? What emerging conditions in the global marketplace made this strategy feasible?
3. Do you think Unilever could have pursued the same basic strategy 30 years ago? If not, why not, and what
has changed to make it possible today?
4. Despite being globally branded, Unilever still tweaked the Dove campaign from nation to nation. Why did it
do this? What does this tell you about national differences in consumer behavior?
Rubric for grading:

CRITERIA PERFORMANCE INDICATORS POINTS

Provided pieces of evidence, supporting
Content 8
details, and factual scenarios
Expressed the points in a clear and logical
Organization of Ideas 2
arrangement of ideas in the paragraph
TOTAL 10

REFERENCES
Hill, C. W., & Hult, G. T. (2018). International business: Competing in the global marketplace (12th ed.). New
York: McGraw-Hill Education.

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