I Don’t Want My Marketing Content to Be Controversial. How About You?
About three years ago, Dove has posted a 3 seconds GIF, which was a piece of marketing content, on its social media platform. The GIF showed the transformation of 3 women into one another – a black woman took off her clothes and became white, then the white girl took off her clothes and became a yellow one.
Not long after, this content had been heavily criticized. This is because some people thought this marketing content of a cleaning product was indicating that people with darker skin color were less “clean” than those who with lighter skin color. Based on this point of view, the GIF was considered to be racist and offensive.
Actually, it was not the first time Dove have done this. Similar situation has happened in 2011.
The poster above showed that three women were standing in front of two pictures – the left one with a label “before” showed the dry skin texture; while the right one marked “after” was smoother. However, since the black girl was standing on the left, the yellow girl in the middle, and the white girl on the right, some people thought that Dove was suggesting the skin of women with color were not as good as white girls. So, this one has also caused Dove a storm of racism.
Are those contents really racist? Maybe, but not necessarily. Let’s leave aside whether or not Dove intend to be racist, and discuss from the perspective of normal content marketing.
As is known to all, the United States of America has a racially and ethnically diverse population, which means the U.S. market values ethnic diversity a lot. In this context, brands and companies are making every effort to show their concern about every race by hiring actors of all races. Likewise, this is also Dove’s original intention of creating those contents when marketing their products. However, controversial contents can be really detrimental to the brand even with good intentions in the first place.
How They Could Have Been Done Better?
Avoiding misunderstanding
It is worth nothing that “the order” means a lot in both cases discussed above. “The orders” were very suggestive and misleading. If Dove changed the “order” – turning a white girl into a girl with color instead of the other way around; Or put the white girl on the “before” side, – the content will not be so controversial.
So, the lesson here is paying attention to every detail that may be misleading. There are many things can be done to make sure of that. For example, recruiting people who are good at finding problems; Letting outsiders (could be people outside the creation team or people from another department) to check the contents before it is published; Avoiding vague or sensitive topics, etc.
Resonate with target audiences
As a Chinese saying goes, people gather by category, things by group, which means people tend to be attracted by similar groups of people of their own type. Also, people are rarely controversial when they are with their own kind and resonate with each other. Dove have noticed that. The majority of Dove’s target audiences are women users, age 18-35, from all races, value natural and healthy beauty products. So, many of their marketing contents have these characters – three young women of three races, look healthy and happy.
However, the more powerful way of marketing is more complex than just using the right actors. Telling a story will be better. Telling a story of users who have used the product, including how to use, the feeling of using it, the effect of using it, and so on, can provide customer a convincing perspective. Telling a story of users who have the same problem as the target audience and have their problem solved by the products provided by the brand can resonate with the customer and touch them deeply in the heart. To tell a story, video is an ideal method to use.
Be related to the brand voice
One of the key elements to the success of marketing, especially of branding, is continuity. Continuity means sticking to the core concept of the brand all the time. The core concept of a brand can be the vision, the mission, and reflected in the brand’s tagline. Dove’s tagline is “Every Body is beautiful”; Align with this tagline, Dove launched a Self-Esteem Project to encourage everyone finding their own beauty and confidence.
Successful and uncontroversial content must include the brand voice, which is the embodiment of the brand core concept. Actually, it is really easy for Dove to tell a story of beauty of diversity which related to their brand voice. However, in both cases discussed above, they failed to do it well.
Here Is an Example of Using the Three Points to Make Dove’s Content Better:
My plan is shooting a video to tell a story. Let’s picture a girl with color, who often wears really heavy makeup, no matter what time and where she goes. Even her best friends have never seen her face without makeup. Unfortunately, voices of doubt begin to appear. People think she pays too much attention on her own appearance, which makes her a hypocritical girl who never dare to show her true face.
One day, luckily, the girl meets Dove, our product. She uses it to wash her delicate but sad face. Enjoying the comfortable experience of washing and the inspiration of Dove’s brand concept, she decides to show the way she really looks like, bravely and confidently, to her friends.
Finally, everyone can see her real face—a face covered with many large white spots. She has albinism. However, after a brief silence, all of the others recover from shock, hug her tightly, and praise her for her beauty and courage.
In the end, a slogan will appear—Dove, show your real beauty.
Actually, this is a story based on a real event. A girl with albinism from Kenya had insisted to make up for years, which she thought would make her look like a normal person. But in the end, she gave up the fear of being scary, and her real face was accepted by all her friends, more importantly, by herself.
I think this story matches the Dove’s concept very much. By watching this story, people, no matter who with defects, with color, or just everyone in the world with less confidence, will be encouraged to identify the beauty of themselves. At the same time, the audience can actually feel what Dove was always trying to show—the beauty of simple and real, the power of confidence, hope, joy, and peace.
(Pictures are taken from the Internet, the copyright belongs to the original author.)
