Daniel Im

IB Lang 11

Moosman 3

Dove Ad Campaign Campaign

Dove’s main goal is to promote body positivity within their ads and in doing so, use

technology of the modern day to better promote this goal. Beauty is the quality of a thing that

appeals to one person. Beauty can apply to how a person looks to the way the surrounding looks.

Why beauty is important to society is because it allows society to the richness of our

surroundings and because beauty is only a positive thing. There are no downsides to beauty, and

it’s a natural aspect of humans to thrive for the positive things in life. Dove tries to appeal to the

beauty of humans by selling hygienic products and their main “motive” for selling their products

is to promote body image and positivity. This can be seen within the advertisements and websites

from them. Dove’s main goal may be to promote body positivity, which can be seen by the

different ads, but the parent company's goals don't seem like that. The article, The good, the bad

and the ugly of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty talks about the goods of the Dove campaign

but also the bads and uglies behind it. As said in the article, this campaign triggered a global

conversation about the definition of beauty. It seems that beauty was directed towards females

themselves and how they have to fulfill this specific standard in order to be considered to be

“beautiful” but a new idea about this sparked with the new conversation. Mindset of body image

also changed. One major problem was the use of technology to make these women seem

“perfect.” The use of technology allows them to change up the advertisements to seem more

beautiful and appealing, but this would cause young women to start thinking that that was the

ideal woman figure. However, now with the Dove campaign, it allowed younger women to see
that all shapes and sizes are acceptable. In the ads from Dove and the website, they use the power

of technology to make these women look better and happier. This helps deepen the effectiveness

of their advertisements and overall message they are trying to propose.

The degree to which someone should accept themselves is, in my opinion, when they

reach a point they are happy with. I feel that it’s important to strive for a body figure that you

want because if people are content with their figure at an unhealthy point, then it can be much

more harmful in the end. Health is extremely important for humans to live a happy life. This

includes both mental and physical health. This is a thing that Dove is in a way helping. They are

promoting a healthier mental lifestyle but the thing is that is promoting body positivity for the

current state. Although some of their advertisements show people who are different shapes and

sizes, there is only one ad that was provided. For example, in the Dove commercial, Meet the

Women, it does show women in different shapes that are proud of themselves and this is

effective. However, in most of the other advertisements and even their website show women, and

even men, in the same/similar body shape, which is lean. This is the thing about technology.

Technology has a lot of power in the virtual world. With technology, things can be montoned out

to provide less emphasis while other things are brightened and bolded with bright colors that pop

out and feel positive and happy. This is shown in the ads by Dove and even by Unilever adds.

When there is something that is seen to be a positive thing, they put bright colors around it.

However, when it is something that isn’t really isn’t something that is something exposed and

shown to the world as a positive thing, its normally in a different sadder color. Examples of this

are the Solutions for a Small Planet and My Life, My Card. These ads are about privacy and this

isn’t something that you want to exclaim and show everyone so they used grey as a way to
emphasize that this is something that should be exclaimed a lot. But in the other dove ads

promoting body positivity, they use bright and pretty colors to show and promote this.

After looking at the other Unilever ads, it seems their goal is to promote body

positivity and one that is one of the best things to buy to help their products. They are always

using their products and looking very happy when using it. With the help of modern technology,

as stated before, they can point out things and dull things just by using colors. However, they can

also use different angles and shots to help promote things. For example, the 2016 Super Bowl

Axe advertisement was advertising different masculine bodies and what really matters. It starts

off with showing off other images of very masculine men, ones that were “ideal,” and then

zooms into a man in a car with a larger nose. It said why need a six-pack when you got the nose.

Then transitions to a man in a blue suit and the narrator saying why need a nose when you got a

suit. Again, it transitions to a man in a bathroom with a fiery passion, then to a man dancing in

heels, then to a man with a large beard with two small kittens. Then transitions to the product

they’re advertising, which is AXE products, saying why need this when you got your own thing.

With different angles and different color schemes from technology, it was able to make a much

more effective advertisement and also have an effect on the hidden message in it. Another ad is

the Dove ‘Meet the Women’. In this ad, it shows a bunch of women doing other activities talking

about what they think is beauty. All these women have different aspects about them like size,

look, and race. In this ad, they showed activities of these women enjoying them with them also

talking over them about what they think beauty is and it just adds a lot of feeling behind it. The

reason I choose these two ads is because of how powerful their message can be. They both

promote body positivity and are effective with it. One has women in it while the Axe ones consist

of men. Their main goal isn’t really gender but rather body positivity. So overall, with the use of
technology, Dove, and even Unilever, in a way used technology to better promote beauty and

body positivity.