Unilever's Hard Choice; Real Beauty or Axe Effect?

Almost 2 years ago, Unilever's Dove launched "Real Beauty Campaign" where they used normal women in their ads as opposed to super models and super photoshop tricks.

Dove supported that commercial campaign with a social responsibility program: Dove Self-Esteem Fund. Program aims to reach-out to 5 million young women until 2010 to help free the next generation from self-limiting beauty stereotypes. Now, this was an excellent example of positionnig from both "brand connection" and "social responsibility" point of views. They were uniqe and different from competition by the story they told their consumers. Dove was very sincere in their move, what about Unilever?

Around the same time, another brand of Unilever was busy by their campaign: The Axe Effect
The main message of that campaign is for young man: "Use Axe and women will be your slaves". Women images in the ads were 180 degrees opposite of what was idealized in Dove's campaign and they grew the stereotypes that "Self-Esteem Fund is aiming to kill. Of course Dove's (and Unilever's) sincerity was questioned and many people perceived Dove's campaign as a tactical marketing initiative rather than a sign of truly integrated social values.




I understand the complexity of the situation that Unilever is in with 2 different brands with different target audience and brand positioning, nevertheless in the long run sticking with corporate values, transparency and consistency are far more important than shorter term tactical campaigns. I do not expect Axe to stand for Dove's Real Beauty Campaign but the current situation is far more conflicting diminishes the value of one of the great examples of integrated Social Responsibility and Marketing campaigns