the new Dove ad
Late last year I blogged about the competition run by Dove so that real women could make ads for Dove about real women.
The winner, 22-year-old Lindsay Miller from California, in her ad sings into a pink hairbrush and dances in the shower. “Thinking about beauty and what it means to me … and to me it’s when I’m doing the ridiculous things that I’m doing.”
You can read more about it here and watch the video below or, if it doesn’t work, watch it here.
So, what do you think? Is the ad successful in depicting real women? (I do like the tag line)
I’m not sure I like this ad — though I like the “real women” campaign in general. I would like the commercial to look a little better, and maybe be a little less cliche. All in all, I agree with Shelly Palmer’s comments on the commercial.
I think user-generated content is a great trend. I think it can lead to new, exciting things. I just don’t see that here.
– Kimberly
i like it a lot. i think it’s great because i’ve done the whole rockstar while showering more times than i’d like to admit. it shows a real woman in a real life situation so i think they accomplished their goal.
It seems to be somewhat predictable and doesn’t really touch on any ‘new’ ground. It’s cliche and just reminds me of a more feminine version of the old ‘decore’ ads where people are singing in the shower. While it does feature a more ‘realistic’ woman as the feature, thats the only real thing about the ad. I can’t speak for everyone but I know I don’t pretend to be a rock star in the shower. Why do they ony show women in power in this way anyway?
I was rather interested in the “Real Women” campaign when Dove first did it, but when it was released, I was disappointed. They all had a few lumps and bumps, sure, but they still all looked like models to me. Where’s the freckles, the red curly hair, the moles, the stretch marks, the tan lines, the computer-glow skin…? It seemed like they were promoting a certain kind of real – an acceptable real.
This ad… well, almost the same. I like that she’s singing into her hairbrush, but she still looks too beautiful and too much like a model to be considered completely normal and average. She’s confident, but she’s not average in her looks – she’s beautiful, and I think unfortunately that Dove doesn’t recognize that beauty and confidence don’t necessarily coincide with one another – you may be Ugly Betty with the confidence of Paris Hilton.
I don’t think this commercial achieves anything different than any other advertisement with a professional actress. I think beautiful has always encompassed cute, smiley and vibrant. The iconography of the commercial is as standard as it gets – woman naked, shower, lather, wet hair, I love myself smile. The pan down to her tummy really undermines anything that could have been seen as showing beauty as a function of personhood rather than body because it objectifies her into a body to be looked at. There was no need for us to linger on her tummy.
I agree Rachel. I have a few views about this ad and the competition itself.
1. The girl uses cliched imagery that fits in with traditional shower products ads, either through lack of imagination or because she thought that was what the judges would be looking for.
2. I think Dove chose the ad because it looks like something they would probably come up with themselves. They wouldn’t select something that diverted from this style, that took a risk and really crossed some boundaries in mainstream advertising.
Perhaps they could have skipped the skin and went straight to the singing.
Then the ad would be closer to what I thought it should have been – an ad featuring a “real woman” that just happened to be about soap, rather than an ad about soap that just happened to include a “real woman”.
real beauty is not needing or wanting to use superfluous “beauty” products like those promoted by dove. i find dove’s campaign completely hypocritical.
– kelly