Dove: Selling Positive Self Esteems and Viral Videos. With a Side Helping of Soap.

Dove, owned by parent company Unilever, released a new video as part of their Real Beauty campaign two weeks ago.  To say that it has been a success would be an understatement.  The video had over 27 million views on YouTube in just the first 10 days after it was released.

The premise of the video was that Dove hired Gil Zamora, an FBI-trained forensic artist, who has drawn composite sketches for the San Jose, California police department for years.  He was behind a curtain with an easel and sketch pad, as each woman individual described her physical appearance.  Zamora drew the woman as she described, then a second woman described her.  The difference between the two images was drastic, with the women being much harder on themselves than the stranger who described them.  The message that Dove conveyed was that women are more beautiful than we give ourselves credit for, and we shouldn't be so hard on ourselves.

From a social media standpoint, the video was a hit.  The video had an enormous number of shares on Facebook and Twitter, with people sharing and discussing with friends.  This increased overall awareness and share-of-mind for Dove.  The fact that the video broke through the slew of videos that are posted on  YouTube each day speaks volumes for the success of Dove's ability to spread their message (and their brand) virally.  Twitter users were tagging @dove and using the hashtag #wearebeautiful, which was essentially free marketing for the company.

According to the Dachis Group, a company that measures social media engagement, Dove's brand passion score increased over 1000 percent in the week following the Real Beauty Sketches video launching.  A high passion score indicates that a large number of people are having conversations on social media channels about the video, and that the conversations are positive.  

One of my favorite pieces of the Dove Real Beauty Sketches video hit was the parody that was released about a week after the original.  It features the exact same premise for the video, but with men describing themselves.  The contract between their own descriptions of themselves (and consequently, their drawings), and the descriptions of the strangers is also quite different.  However, the parody is that the men describe themselves as models, whereas the strangers make them look much worse than the women's own descriptions of themselves.  The serious tone of the men's video makes it that much funnier.  The parody surely only drew more attention to the original Dove video, which was a win for the actual campaign, and it earned bonus points for the entertainment value.

In today's world of media that is competing for viewer's attention, Dove hit the nail on the head by reaching the vulnerable area of women's self esteem, but in a positive way.  While Dove is ultimately selling soap, they are also selling a mind shift for women.  I applaud them for showing women that they truly are beautiful, and for an incredible social media campaign.

Here's some links related to this post:


-Dove Real Beauty Sketches:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpaOjMXyJGk
-Parody with the Men:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8Jiwo3u6Vo

-Dachis Group article about Dove's social media engagement: http://www.dachisgroup.com/2013/04/doves-real-beauty-impacts-real-women-and-creates-real-impact/

Fresh Social Media Statistics For 2013: The World Is Moving Fast.

The statistics surrounding social media use continue to get more interesting.  According to Gregory Ferenstein's "Fresh Stats on Social Networks" article that was published on TechCrunch's site back in February, there have been some shakeups in the landscape that may not be surprising to those of us who are addicted to nearly every platform that is included in the research.

Ferenstein cites that Pinterest has nearly caught up with Twitter in terms of usage, with 15% of the US population using Pinterest and 16% using Twitter.  Women are more than five times as likely to be hooked on the aspirational-image based site, although, let's be honest - there are far more men on Pinterest than will ever 'fess up to having an account.  And let's also be honest that even if the men in our lives do not have a Pinterest account themselves, they are benefitting from our addiction in the form of countless new recipes (some which belong on www.pinterestfail.com!), and from a slew of additions to the honey-do list when we stumble across endless home improvement ideas.

Facebook still has far and away the largest user base, with 67% of the US adult population actively stalking long lost high school acquaintances.  Instagram boasts 13% of the population signed up, and Tumblr wraps up the statistics at 6%.

The important thing to consider about these statistics is how we can capitalize on them as marketers.  The world of marketing has changed rapidly over the past decade, and the pace of change is only accelerating further.  Print and television media, which were once kings of the marketing world, are now only one of the many options among the newly developed landscape of marketing platforms.  As marketers, it is key to meet our customers "where they already are" - and they are clearly logged into social media. 

With the rapidly changing landscape, the addition of new players to the social scene is also picking up.  Each new platform seems to attract users more quickly than the last.  Pinterest and Instagram were hardly household words just two years ago, and now they have sucked in a statistically significant size of the population.  This shows that, as marketers, we need to be able to adopt new platforms more quickly than our consumers so that we are already there and ready to market to them before the onslaught of users gets on board.  Cycle times are increasing and innovation and speed are key to keeping pace.

Here's a link to the original article with the statistics:
http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/17/social-media-statistics-2012/