Wondering how a brand like Dove garnered around 800 million social media impression from a single campaign? GoSEO will give an in-depth explanation.
At A Glance
Established in 1957, Dove was originally known to be a cream brand, not a soap brand. However, with the expansion of culture, Unilever, which owned this brand, identified a change. Being a cream brand alone cannot fit with the needs of today’s society.
It expanded its product range to include more soaps and also rebranded the category. The brand’s identity consists of the Dove pink color, the unique bottle shape, and a signature curve. It is a symbol that signifies that a woman is confident and sure of herself.
With this in mind, the Dove team started to change its brand positioning approach. From an explicit direction of showing how women can be nurturers and caretakers to now representing how women can also be strong and independent.
Their extensive research about women’s perception of beauty leads them to believe that advertising and the media set an unrealistic and unhealthy standard about beauty. Worse, most of them feel so low after reading women’s magazines.
To combat it, the brand focused on breaking the stereotypical images that are in their advertisements. They wanted to stimulate women to a better and deeper level in order to change the “pain and anger” they feel in their body image. Hence, the campaign for #RealBeauty.
How Dove Boosted Its Social Media Impressions
#RealBeauty campaign perceived women as a ticket to educate men about what they feel and understand about beauty. Instead of using sexual innuendos, they state the plain and simple truth.
This campaign does not “dumbed-down” women but elaborates just how powerful and valuable they are true.
It started in 2004 with a firming advertisement, surprising the industry as it featured real women with their actual bodies. It is to suggest that despite imperfections and flaws, they are still beautiful.
This advertisement tackles the notions of women’s bodies. It refutes all the lies that media and advertisements impose on women. Women are told to stay petite, no matter what, to be beautiful.
Dove’s content is always consistent on social media, where it targets women on their shopping habits, family obligations, and beauty routines. Through thoughtful content marketing, Dove has built up a massive following of women across the globe.
It was created to provide confidence to women through legitimate messages, candidly capturing their audience’s attention with carefree images and videos about topics they find interesting.
One of the impressive marketing campaigns by Dove is its “Beauty with a Purpose” campaign. In the past, the brand had focused on women in their teens and 20s. But they have shifted to appealing to a broader audience of consumers.
Dove’s new campaign has been received well by consumers. With 800 million social media impressions from Facebook alone (2017), this business is doing very well, and it has almost become like a norm for them. So what do you think are the tricks to doing that?
Build an engaging cult.
At first, Dove launched different billboard advertisements in the United States that displayed pictures of real women with witty options like “Wrinkled or Wonderful,” or “Flat or Curvaceous.” They are simply using the brand to have a conversation with women, defining beauty by what they think.
It raised a lot of awareness to consumers about what they really think is beautiful. It was not only shared on social media, but it was also posted on billboards, magazine pages, and television commercials.
To build an empire, you need to have a cult following. People follow you because you make them feel good. You are not a marketer here. You are their hero here. You are their muse. You are their motivation.
With the desire to revolutionize the idea of Real Beauty, this campaign featured different types of women from different races and ages.
Create relatable content.
Dove’s content marketing efforts are truly exceptional. The brand has mastered the art of creating content that people find interesting and shareable with their friends. Sometimes, this brand would feature real videos with customers who have used their products with captions showing how they feel.
When creating content for your brand, understand your audience. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and see what they would like to see.
Connect to the consumer emotionally.
Dove’s marketing campaign, named the #SpeakBeautiful campaign, aims to encourage women to have a positive conversation about their beauty. It has started to be part of the online routine of every woman out there.
#SpeakBeautiful encourages women to be more confident with beautiful things usually taken for granted, like talking about your favorite dessert or wearing your swimsuit in public. There are lots of ways for this brand to connect with the consumer on an emotional level.
To further support the campaign, the brand collaborated with Twitter to craft a video ad fighting body shaming online. As a result, by 2015, women utilized #SpeakBeautiful 168,000 times every single day on social media. This resulted in 800 million impressions!
Your Key Takeaway
Whatever your business is, you always need to know your value equation or functional or emotional benefits to your market segment.
Dove clearly succeeds because it created meaningful content that targets the consumer’s needs on an emotional level and encourages the consumer to think differently about how they see themselves.
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