Real Women Have Curves
www.campaignforrealbeauty.com - please visit this site and sign the pledge! Dove is donating One Dollar for each pledge to the Girl Scouts Of America. Go to the website to read more - also here is an article.
Ad campaign tell women to celebrate who they are
By Theresa Howard, USA TODAY - July 8, 2005
NEW YORK - Some health and beauty marketers are trying to send a message about body image that many parents have tried to teach their daughters for years: Be happy with who you are.
Unilever's Dove brand and retailer Bath & Body Works, in a deal with American Girl, are ditching the traditional "aspirational" marketing messages that tell women and girls that if they buy a particular health or beauty product, they can look like the supermodel in the ad.
Instead of images of long locks, longer legs and incredibly lean bodies, the two companies are promoting their products with a message of "real beauty" by encouraging women and girls to celebrate themselves as they are - while using the products, of course.
It's a marketing risk: The "real beauty" ads still need to sell women on the idea that they need these products to become even better.
"Any change in the culture of advertising that allows for a broader definition of beauty and encourages women to be more accepting and comfortable with their natural appearance is a step in the right direction," says psychologist and author Mary Pipher. "But embedded within this is a contradiction. They are still saying you have to use this product to be beautiful."
Pipher - whose seven books include Hunger Pains (about female body image) and Reviving Ophelia (about teen girls' sense of self) adds, however: "It's better than what we've had in the past."
Bath & Body Works is hoping to catch teens and pre-teens before they are immersed in today's celebrity-obsessed culture.
Next month, it launches a line of shampoos and lotions under the licensed brand name "American Girl realbeauty Inside and Out." The retailer hopes to leverage the popularity of the Mattel-owned American Girl brand of historical books, dolls and other merchandise - and its inspirational philosophy.
"If you look at the messages in mass marketing today and TV programs, the emphasis is on outer beauty, cosmetics and extreme makeovers," says Rick Ruffolo, vice president, new ventures for Bath & Body Works. "This is to some degree a counter movement or a coming back to the more traditional values around the whole person."
Unilever has led the way with a global ad effort and Web site (campaignforrealbeauty.com) for its Dove brand. It tries to reach - and reassure - women who might be self-conscious about their bodies.
Print and TV ads in the campaign that just went national in the USA feature candid and confident images of curvy, full-bodied, real women - not traditional models. The ads promote Dove skin products such as Intensive Firming Cream, Intensive Firming Lotion and Firming Body Wash. Containing blends of glycerin, seaweed extract and elastin peptides, they claim to have skin-firming properties and to reduce the appearance of cellulite.
In the ads, the six real women appear in panties and bras in their natural, unretouched glory. Unilever has been using a similar campaign in the United Kingdom.
"We wanted to debunk the stereotypical beauty stereotype that exists. We are recognizing that beauty comes in different sizes, shapes and ages," says Philippe Harousseau, Dove marketing director. Dove recently surveyed 18-to-65-year-olds in 10 countries about perceptions of beauty, and the results "seemed to be incredibly and increasingly narrow," he says.
Seeking to broaden the perception, Unilever used talent scouts to find Shanel Lu, a Maryland manicurist; Stacy Nadeau, a student in Michigan; Sigrid Sutter, an administrative assistant in California; Julie Arko, a kindergarten teacher in North Carolina; Lindsey Stokes, a retail assistant in Maryland; and Gina Crisanti, a Texan working in a Chicago coffee shop.
Crisanti says she was taking out trash at the shop, and when she returned, a scout who had spotted her sold her on trying out by showing her the U.K. campaign.
"When she showed me the U.K. ad, I was taken aback," says Crisanti, 24. "To see real women in all shapes and sizes represented in such an honest way, I thought it was bold and compelling, and I knew I wanted to be part of it.
"Women such as Crisanti, who wears size 6 pants and size 12 for other apparel, also were picked because a scary-skinny model would be hard to take seriously pitching a line of cellulite-reducing products.
"A size 2 supermodel would have been a real challenge in highlighting the benefits of our products," says Harousseau.
While cellulite might not be an issue for pre-teens, body consciousness is starting younger than ever. American Girl realbeauty Inside and Out products, priced from $4 to $12, have inspiring names such as My Way Styling Gel, Full of Hope Soap and Take your Vitamins Daily Body Lotion and include one of 150 motivational sayings, such as, "Real beauty is how you look when you're having fun."
The products will sell in the chain's 1,200 stores, and American Girl will sell them at its two flagship stores and in its magazines.
"Our target is the 8-to-10-year-old on the cusp of adolescence, when the pressure starts to hit," says Therese Kauchak-Maring, senior editor at American Girl and author of the book Real Beauty, out last fall. "These are not just pretty bottles of sweet-smelling lotions. These products help them understand that taking care of yourself and feeling healthy is important."