TR E N D S 24 AUGUST 2021

Unvarnished Truths /
Contagious Trend

How brands are embracing imperfections and bringing honesty into their advertising in order to win trust and
stand out from the crowd

Definition: Over the past few years brands have begun presenting more realistic, less idealised portrayals of human experiences
in their advertising.

At a glance /

By reflecting audiences’ realities through these ‘unvarnished truths’, brands can demonstrate empathy in order to distinguish
themselves from competitors, and ultimately drive consumer preference
The trend is particularly apparent in categories with a predominantly female customer base, such as babycare and femcare,
which have traditionally presented airbrushed versions of women’s experiences
Used in other categories, such as with food products, unvarnished truths can be light-hearted and humorous
As the trend becomes more prevalent, any take on ‘cut-the-shit’ advertising must be specific and relevant to what a brand is
about to avoid blending into a sea of similarity

Landscape

Tried and tested /

When Dove first explored the concept of ‘Real Beauty’ back in 2004 (read our Dove Brand Spotlight to learn more), there were
fears within parent company Unilever that women would not buy a beauty brand that didn’t promise to take them to new levels of
attractiveness. But the brand went with its hunch and broke with category conventions by showing that curves and wrinkles could
be as beautiful as flawless skin and catwalk physiques. The Campaign For Real Beauty led to a 700% increase in sales for Dove
creams, and the brand’s share of the firming lotion market in the UK increased from 1% to 6%.

© 2022 Contagious
Part of the success of the Real Beauty positioning was its distinctiveness. Competitors’ ads were exclusively populated with
airbrushed models, lacking in diversity and relatability, and Dove was showing customers that its products were for women who
looked like them. So Real Beauty chimed with consumers – Dove’s Real Truth About Beauty report, which canvassed 3,200
women aged 18 to 64 across 10 countries, found that 68% of women agreed that ‘the media and advertising set an unrealistic
standard of beauty that most women can’t ever achieve’ – but more importantly, it was unmistakably Dove.

Cultural shift /

But what was then a risky and unconventional strategy is, 17 years later, now closer to being the norm. The rise of social media
brought with it influencer culture, FaceTuning, cosmetic surgery-style selfie filters and a particularly pernicious breed of
unrealistic beauty standards and body dysmorphia, which led to a backlash against perfection. In 2014, the #NoMakeupSelfie
trend gained such traction after being popularised by celebrities including Beyoncé and Gwyneth Paltrow, that when Cancer
Research UK asked users to add a donation request and text code to their bare-faced posts, it raised $11m in six days.

In 2015, Australian teen influencer Essena O’Neill made news for deleting more than 2,000 of her Instagram pictures that she
said ‘served no real purpose other than self-promotion’. O’Neill re-captioned the remaining 96 images with statements such as ‘I
just want younger girls to know this isn’t candid life, or cool or inspirational. It’s contrived perfection made to get attention.’

This very public ‘crisis of conscience’ captured the beginnings of influencer fatigue: a fast-dwindling tolerance for inauthenticity
and a loss of trust in a marketplace that is ‘overly saturated with vainglorious players, some of whom artificially inflate their
numbers’, writes Hannah Murphy for the Financial Times.

In 2017, the fraudulently marketed social media sensation, Fyre Festival, failed so spectacularly to follow through on the
glamorous party it promised that it got its own Netflix documentary, which exposed the illusory and deceitful nature of social
media and influencers. Rising social media stars such as Emma Chamberlain have swapped masterfully edited shots of avocado
on toast for more candid pictures that seem to capture everyday life unstaged.

Alas, retouched pictures of celebrities hawking weight loss supplements aren’t going anywhere any time soon – in the UK the
Advertising Standards Authority even recently launched a dedicated page on its website that names and shames influencers who
repeatedly fail to disclose when their Instagram posts are ads. But platforms such as Instagram and TikTok have helped
popularise the body positivity and body neutrality movements, which encourage people to practice self-love and self-acceptance.

The #BodyPositivity hashtag on TikTok has 13.5 billion views and has bred popular trends that challenge traditional beauty
standards, such as creators showing what their stomachs look like when relaxed, how their figures change when posed and
unposed, or showing off areas of their body that are usually hidden on social media, like acne, love handles and stretch marks.

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Mental health matters /

This appetite for transparency and a greater collective willingness to show the imperfect side of ourselves has helped us push
back against the idea of perceived perfection, and part of that has been an increased openness around mental health.

Now that we have the terms and spaces both online and offline to openly discuss mental health – a subject that was still taboo
and misunderstood even a decade ago – honesty around mental health issues is more acceptable. You only have to look at the
difference between the media response to Britney Spears’ breakdown in 2007 and the mainstream support for the #FreeBritney
movement today to see how much the rhetoric around mental health has changed.

This year, when tennis player Naomi Osaka and gymnast Simone Biles stepped down from their respective sporting
commitments for mental health reasons, their decisions were (largely) met with praise and held up as examples of bravery and
progress – a stark difference to the ‘ridicule’ Australian rower Sally Robbins received when she quit the Athens Games due to
anxiety 17 years ago.

And transparency around traditionally taboo mental health topics has increased, with cultural landmarks like the rise of the
#BeKind movement in the wake of TV presenter Caroline Flack’s death by suicide, and Meghan Markle sharing her experience of
miscarriage, all helping to provoke conversations and dissolve stigmas. This diminished risk around discussing sensitive issues
is something that brands have both contributed to and responded to through presenting unvarnished truths in their advertising.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggCaejQWrPI

Earning trust /

Dove’s success with Real Beauty shows us that breaking with category norms is not just a sensible marketing strategy to
distinguish your brand from its category by avoiding lazy advertising tropes. It’s also a way to show empathy for and earn the
trust of the people who buy your product – and we know that brand trust is an indicator of growth. Edelman’s 2021 Trust
Barometer Special Report: Trust, The New Brand Equity, concluded that trust is more important than brand love to consumers
when deciding which brand to buy and use, with 61% of the study’s respondents prepared to advocate for a brand (to friends or
on social media) if they fully trust it, and 57% prepared to purchase a new product or service from a trusted brand, even if it’s not
as cheap as other options.

In our Transparency Trailblazers trend we outlined how brands from all sectors have taken advantage of the decline in consumer
trust by injecting transparency into their marketing campaigns. McDonald’s, for example, used its 2012 Our Food, Your
Questions campaign to respond to questions from the public (eg, ‘Do you really use 100% beef in your burgers?’) with short
videos that dispelled myths around the provenance of its menu items.

In response to the question ‘Why does your food look different in your advertising than in the store?’, McDonald's released a
behind-the-scenes film from a burger photo shoot, which attracted 6.7 million views. And in 2019, Chipotle released Behind the
Foil, a documentary that offered a behind-the-scenes look at the burrito chain’s kitchens, employees and suppliers, to win back
the trust of customers after a food safety crisis (increasing revenue by 13.9% and doubling digital sales in the process).

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A gendered issue /

The Unvarnished Truths trend is particularly apparent in the baby and feminine care categories, because it is a response to what
has come before: traditionally these categories have presented airbrushed versions of pregnancy, parenthood and female intimate
health, and ‘it’s kind of bullshit’, says Will Sansom, strategy director at The Brooklyn Brothers. ‘It’s mum looking well-rested,
beautiful make-up, happy, dad is playing a toy xylophone, the baby isn’t covered in vomit and it’s just not what parenting looks
like. Unfortunately, what happens is that parents look at that and think, am I doing something wrong?’ In a report commissioned
by PR agency Diffusion that examined the attitudes of 1,000 UK mums, aged 24-38, 23% of mothers stated they find parenting
influencers difficult to trust, as it’s not always clear whether they’re being paid to promote a product, and 10% of respondents
said they had unfollowed ‘perfect mums’.

What a lot of these brands need to do is not tell a story, they just need
to tell the truth. The truth is scary, but only if you don’t back it up with a
support system
Ambika Pai, Mekanism

Similarly, despite affecting a little over half of the global population, perfectly ordinary and natural experiences such as
menstruation and menopause are often glossed over or veiled in euphemism, deemed too gruesome to be truthfully depicted in
advertising – which reinforces the stigma attached to female bodily functions.

‘Established brands that function within the established rules of marketing and advertising don’t want to touch those topics with
a 10 foot pole, because they have accrued a userbase over the years that hasn’t been used to a brand speaking in that
way,’ says Mekanism chief strategy officer Ambika Pai. Why show a woman grimacing through period cramps when you can dress
her in white jeans and have her riding white a horse through a meadow of flowers?

Ads like this might be ripe for parody, but they can have serious consequences: advertising that perpetuates secrecy and shame
around women’s health is just irresponsible. ‘What a lot of these brands need to do is not tell a story, they just need to tell the
truth,’ says Pai. ‘The truth is scary, but only if you don’t back it up with a support system.’

Because advertising has failed to reflect women’s realities for so long, more realistic portrayals are simply more urgent in
categories that skew female, as opposed to, say, the pet care category. In the words of Cindy Gallop, consultant and former
chair of BBH in the US, ‘Women challenge the status quo because we are never it.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Sg15VlwD0g

Bodyform / Blood Normal

If there is one campaign that encapsulates the Unvarnished Truths trend, it’s Blood Normal, by Essity-owned period care brand
Bodyform (read our Brand Spotlight here). Created in 2017 by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, London, the Europe-wide campaign
launched with a film that featured a montage of period-related scenes, such as a woman interrupting a dinner party to ask for a
sanitary pad, blood running down the legs of a woman taking a shower, and a man buying tampons at a supermarket.

The idea was to present a world where periods were viewed as a part of everyday life, not a taboo subject. But most crucially, the
ad replaced the clichéd blue-liquid demonstration with red liquid, showing a realistic portrayal of period blood in a TV ad for the
first time. Blood Normal generated 796 million in PR reach, 80 million social impressions and 6 million video views within three
weeks of its launch, and won the Glass Lion at Cannes 2018.

As a challenger brand in the UK, Bodyform had to outsmart rather than outspend, Martina Poulopati, global brand manager at
Essity, told Contagious. ‘The limited marketing budget means we're always looking for opportunities to generate conversations
in a cost-effective way,’ she said. ‘Working in feminine care, one of the first things you realise is how many taboos are in this
category and that most of the brands follow these norms. Bodyform was brave enough to be the first to break from that and from
the huge response it was clear that there was something there for the brand.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfc0P45568I

Based on the positive response the brand received, it went on to bring us Womb Stories in 2020, which explores the complex
and unspoken relationships between women and their wombs, and Pain Stories this year, which shines a light on the ‘gender
pain gap’ to support earlier diagnosis for endometriosis, a condition that causes women acute pain during their menstrual cycle.
‘It started with, “This is what we can do”, and it’s increasingly becoming, “What can we do for women?”,’ says AMV BBDO
strategic director Margaux Revol. ‘Because the brand purpose is all about breaking taboos around women’s intimate health, the
challenge is always to keep pushing the boundaries in a way that is relevant to Bodyform’s specific goal or challenge.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvJsPgAxkhs

Frida Mom / Fourth Trimester

The reality of breastfeeding is underrepresented in the media and as a consequence, many women find the experience isolating
and traumatic. Earlier this year, US parenthood brand Frida Mom and New York-based creative agency Mekanism created a film
called Fourth Trimester to promote its newly launched line of breastcare products and normalise the conflicting journey of

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breastfeeding that exists for all mothers. ‘Our communication objective included delivering on our brand purpose of demystifying
the realities of motherhood and showing the real experience as much as possible,’ says Frida VP of strategy Kelly Meyers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pv7qq_HXgYs

‘We landed on this idea of revealing the realities and helping these mothers live the breastfeeding experience in a way that’s true
to what it actually is versus how it’s been painted out in the world,’ agrees Mekanism’s Pai. ‘Standing up for those topics and for
those women in culture, showing people what life is actually like, that is the role that brands should be playing.’ A 30-second cut
of the spot aired on N BC during the 2021 Golden Globes, while the longer video (1:15) was viewed over 2 million times on
YouTube with an average view duration of 1:02. The campaign generated over 2 billion earned impressions and quadrupled traffic
to Frida.com.

We appreciate that it’s different and that it’s something that’s not
necessarily mainstream in the category. But our belief is that it should
be the norm
Neil Knowles, Tommee Tippee

Tommee Tippee / The Boob Life

Similarly, this babycare brand embraced unapologetic honesty to fight the stigma surrounding breastfeeding. Tommee
Tippee’s The Boob Life, created with London-based creative agency Manifest and Manchester-based production agency The
Gate, addresses the complex issues surrounding breastfeeding, breaks down the idea that breasts are inherently sexual and
promotes two new products.

‘We wanted to cast an honest light on feeding, but we wanted it to be celebrated as well. It’s ultimately about empowering
mothers,’ says Manifest campaign director Emma Corbett. The brief was about resetting category norms, adds Neil Knowles,
who is in charge of Tommee Tippee’s global campaigns and content. ‘We appreciate that it’s different and that it’s something
that’s not necessarily mainstream in the category. But our belief is that it should be the norm.’

[Parents are] disillusioned – about how they’re represented but also

how they’re spoken to, both in the category of babycare, in terms of
what other brands do and say through their advertising, and in the
culture of babycare
Will Sansom, The Brooklyn Brothers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTCtKGYxXxs

WaterWipes / #ThisIsParenthood

In another rejection of falsehoods perpetuated by the babycare category, baby wipes brand WaterWipes launched its first global
campaign with London-based agency The Brooklyn Brothers in 2019. After research by the agency found that half of the 13,000
parents surveyed felt like they were failing in their first year, the brand commissioned a 16-minute documentary,
called #ThisIsParenthood, which followed 86 parents from around the world in their first year of parenthood.

The brand aimed to start an honest conversation about parenthood in a category that was cluttered with contradictory advice
and information, says The Brooklyn Brothers’ Sansom. ‘[Parents are] disillusioned – about how they’re represented but also how
they’re spoken to, both in the category of babycare, in terms of what other brands do and say through their advertising, and in the
culture of babycare.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m3K1E5A9N Ms

Tena / #Ageless

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Mainstream media portrayals of the over 60s would have you believe that they are all passive, immobile and sexually inactive. Not
so, says Tena, an Essity-owned maker of bladder weakness products. In September last year, Tena and AMV BBDO, London
launched a two-part campaign that challenges perceptions around ageing, intimacy and incontinence. The #Ageless campaign
was part of Essity’s purpose to ‘break barriers to wellbeing’, explains AMV BBDO deputy executive creative director Toby Allen.
‘Implicit in that is a degree of disruption and taboo breaking, so they have almost made that the yardstick for how they behave
across everything.’ But it’s not just about being controversial for publicity’s sake, says AMV BBDO joint chief strategy
officer Bridget Angear. ‘We often talk about taboos but I think what we’ve done for this brand and for Bodyform is just show
people what normal is – breaking taboos is not always a shouty or noisy thing, it’s truthfully showing what we believe normal to
be.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfaVkG0SR74

Dove / Courage is Beautiful

As something of a trailblazer in this area, it should have come as no surprise that Dove’s comms during the pandemic were pitch
perfect. Working with Ogilvy Canada, Toronto, and Ogilvy UK in London, Dove created a montage of photographs set to music
that featured real doctors and nurses looking directly at the camera, showing the lines and marks on their faces from wearing
equipment to protect themselves from coronavirus.

The searingly honest creative helped the campaign cut through the sea of sameness that was Covid-19 advertising during the
early stages of the global health crisis (read more in our trend on Reacting to Covid). ‘There are a lot of brands doing stuff in
reaction to what’s going on at the moment and a lot of it is quite similar and generic,’ Daniel Fisher, global executive creative
director at Ogilvy UK, told Contagious at the time. ‘We wanted to do something that only Dove could do.’ The honesty resonated
with people: the Courage is Beautiful campaign achieved 2 billion earned impressions globally, 99% positive sentiment on social
media and $5m donated to the cause.

Billie / Project Body Hair

Founded in 2017, Billie disrupted the women’s razors market by taking a stand against the ‘pink tax’ and offering an affordable
razor priced in line with men’s razors. The brand also shows real body hair in its ads and images – a first for the category – and
donates 1% of its revenue to women’s causes around the world. Somewhat paradoxically for a razor brand, Billie is on a mission
to free women of the shame of having body hair, and launched Project Body Hair, calling for more realistic advertising that
depicts women with body hair. ‘For the past 100 years, women’s razor brands haven’t acknowledged female body hair,’ reads the
campaign website. ‘Commercials show women “shaving” perfectly smooth, airbrushed legs. Strange, huh? But everyone has
short stubble, long strands, or something in between. What you do with yours is up to you – grow it, get rid of it, or comb it. It’s
your hair, after all.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvz7rjBK7BA

La Roche-Posay / Skin is more than skin

French skincare brand La Roche-Posay proudly states that it is both made with and recommended by dermatologists; its
products are allergy-tested, non-comedogenic, and tested on sensitive skin. In its first TV brand campaign, created by BETC
Paris, the L’Oréal-owned brand showcased real skin conditions such as acne, eczema and atopic dermatitis, in an effort to draw
a link between skin and mental health. The campaign was inspired by research carried out in partnership with non-profit
organisation GlobalSkin, which found that 79% of eczema patients have missed work due to their skin condition, 46% of those
with acne were more likely to develop major depression, and 50% of people with atopic dermatitis said that they felt stigmatised
by society. The ad, which features close-ups of real people, reassures those who are suffering that they are not alone – and
provides a refreshing change from the category norm of airbrushed models splashing water over their poreless faces.

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Beyond baby and femcare

Some brands outside the categories of babycare, feminine hygiene or personal care have also begun to take a more honest
approach to their marketing but with a very different tone of voice. While most of the advertising that taps into this trend is
around tackling taboos or championing a cause, ‘unvarnished truths’ can be brought to light in amusing or cheeky ways too. In
the examples below the brands are not drawing attention to social issues, their authenticity comes from being forthright about
the flaws of their products or poking fun at real consumer behaviour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbN Bax8E7XM

Cheetos / Can’t Touch This

One of the best recent examples of this is Cheetos’ Can’t Touch This campaign. Working with Goodby Silverstein & Partners in
San Francisco, the snack brand embraced its distinctive (messy) asset and launched a new popcorn product with a humorous
Super Bowl ad that highlighted how the brand’s iconic orange dust coating gets people out of bothersome tasks. Twice the
amount of popcorn was sold versus the initial forecast, while Cheetos’ overall sales increased by 13%.

The campaign resulted in 4 billion media impressions and was awarded the Creative Strategy Grand Prix at Cannes this year. ‘By
focusing on a product feature that stretches across the Cheetos brand and an insight that is true of its fans, we’ve created a
brand platform that has endless iterations built from that distinctive asset,’ Ralph Paone, group strategy director at Goodby
Silverstein & Partners, told Contagious.

The campaign connects with Cheetos fans by hitting on a trivial, yet universal truth (Cheetos make your fingers orange) and leans
into the Pratfall Effect, which makes us like a brand more because it’s admitting to a flaw – like Stella Artois’ ‘Reassuringly
expensive’ tagline, or Avis’ ‘We try harder’ underdog positioning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WN UjJ-T9pBU

Allplants / We’re Allplants. You don't have to be.

Another, smaller example is this campaign from vegan meal delivery startup Allplants. Although creatively it doesn’t follow the
same tropes as other raw and real ads (close-up shots of stretch marks and nappy rash), it appeals to an audience of flexitarians
by admitting that it can be hard to eat a plant-based diet. Specifically, the ad sees Helen, an aspiring vegan, getting caught
shoving cheese slices into her mouth in her car on by her partner. ‘Relax, Helen. We don’t judge,’ says the VO. ‘We’re Allplants,
but you don’t have to be.’ The idea is that other ‘Helens’ see themselves in the ads, and feel an affinity that will hopefully be
transferred onto the brand. ‘if you want the best chance of growing your brand, consider revelling in your flaws,’ says Richard
Shotton. ‘It will always be a distinctive approach.’

Takeouts /

Accurate and truthful representations in advertising are irresistible because they act as shared experiences, which help us forge
emotional bonds with people, things and brands. ‘If someone were to name this era of work, it would probably be called the cut-
the-shit era of advertising,’ says Mekanism executive creative director Laura Wimer. ‘I don’t want to see someone happy, frolicking

© 2022 Contagious
through a field, all we want is connection.’ And whether that’s achieved through admitting a flaw to employ the Pratfall Effect or by
consciously presenting a faithful version of a common experience, that ‘connection’, which drives trust and brand loyalty, could be
the difference between your brand and your competitor. With that said, there are still pitfalls to watch out for.

The tropes / As more ‘cut-the-shit’ campaigns come out, it’s possible to spot a few emerging tropes. Whether it’s the natural
lighting, the use of ‘realistic’ actors rather than aspirational models, the unapologetic, non-sexualised, non-Photoshopped close-
ups of women’s bodies, the ‘real life’ situations, such as breast pumping while on a laptop in the middle of the night, there’s a
certain sameness to the creative that runs throughout this new breed of ads.

Beatrice Farmelo, the strategist at AMV BBDO who worked on Bodyform’s Pain Stories, says: ‘I think brands are starting to
realise that the best thing to do is to tell the truth. Once one brand has done it, the floodgates open and more brands do it until
telling the truth seems simple.’ That isn’t to say that most of the work featured here isn’t important or at least helpful in
normalising and correcting attitudes and tackling taboos.

But if you don’t ‘cut the shit’ in a way that is creatively distinctive and attributable to your brand, you could end up wasting a
colossal amount of time and money, instead of simply pausing to ensure that your creative work isn’t going to present you in the
same way as a raft of other brands. The Measure Your Distinctive Assets report from Ehrenberg-Bass reveals that, ‘On average,
half the people who see an advertisement fail to correctly identify the brand.’

Zigging at the same time / When Dove launched the Campaign for Real Beauty, it was an unconventional approach that made
the brand stand out from the crowd. It tapped into a proven psychological theory called The Von Restorff effect (also known as
the isolation effect), a cognitive bias that means people are more likely to remember something that’s different from its
surrounding group.

When all ads are glossy statements that overpromise so much that they border on lies, the unvarnished truth sticks out a mile.
Those fizzy drinks don’t actually spread happiness, that perfume doesn’t transport you to a beach littered with wistful
supermodels, and your photos still look crap even when they’re shot on iPhone.

If it feels like all adverts are lying, simply telling people the truth could be the simplest way of triggering the Von Restorff effect.
But by definition, the Von Restorff effect depends on the unvarnished truth sticking out from the crowd. If your strategy is ‘zig
when everyone zags’, then you need to make sure that everyone else isn’t zigging at the same time.

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