On May 8th, Dove introduced different shaped bottles to reflect the body type of various women. I wanted to take a little time to see what the reactions from the customers and from the company would be.
The Result
In general, the Dove bottles were not very well accepted (see Twitter posts below). Kathryn mocked the idea by asking if she should by the bottle that reflects her or the one that she strives to be. While Rachel noted that the bottles don’t have arms so they weren’t true representations. Three days after the announcement, on May 11th, after the various negative responses from social media, the company apologized for the custom bottle campaign.
What’s important to note though is that negative feelings lasted and will last even after the company owns up to its mistakes. For example, almost two weeks later, Linda was still outraged that Dove would objectify women in this way. Thus, while it’s commendable that the company owned up to its mistake, mistakes like these can end up being very costly when it comes to brand image and customer retention.
The Takeaways
Dove is clearly a company that bases its marketing campaign on empowering women but even it runs into issues. This campaign was intended to empower women to accept and feel confident about their body type. Instead, though, it made women feel objectified and offended. When creating a campaign, it’s very important to try to put yourself, as a marketer, in your customer’s shoes. One way to help with this would be to run a focus group. If the focus group is done effectively and without biases such as leading questions, Dove could have avoided this campaign failure.
Regardless of this failed campaign, Dove is an innovative company. In my opinion, it’s better to try something and fail than to always play it safe. The thing to take away is that you should always try to do something innovative but always keep the customer’s reaction in mind.
What do you think of the campaign? Do you think that the customers were really offended or were they just having fun?