Controversial Marketing Campaign of Dove: Real Beauty

Running head: NETWORK AND SOCIAL MEDIA
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[NETWORK AND SOCIAL MEDIA]
[Institute]

NETWORK AND SOCIAL MEDIA 2
Table of contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
ASSESSMENT TASK....................................................................................................................4
Nature of the controversy.............................................................................................................4
Involvement of the individuals or organization within the controversy......................................4
Economic, Social and historical context of the controversy........................................................4
Necessity of shut the communication down................................................................................5
Handling of situation in other way...............................................................................................6
Demonstration of online knowledge during and after the controversy by the organization........6
Lessons taught by this case study regarding dealing with the negative reactions online............6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

NETWORK AND SOCIAL MEDIA 3
INTRODUCTION
Online platform such as social networking sites, blogging, website and many more are
used by the companies for promoting their products and services. The social media platform
provides organizations an opportunity to target huge population at a single place. Along with
this, it costs very less as compare to the other commercial marketing strategies. However, it is
not an easy task for the firms to target their potential customers on social media (Loria, 2015).
Use of inappropriate content, image or videos can lead to develop negative brand image among
the customers. For the current file, a well known brand, Dove is taken into the consideration. In
context to this, the study includes nature of the controversy, individuals included in it, handling
the situation and the way firm deal with negative reactions.
Controversial Marketing Campaign of Dove: Real Beauty-
Dove is one of the most popular personal care brands which is owned by Unilever. The
different items offered by the company includes soap, shampoo, cream, etc. Dove conducted an
online marketing campaign for promoting its products. The name of the campaign was “Dove
campaign for Real Beauty which received huge criticism from the audience when company
published it online in 2014.
ASSESSMENT TASK
Nature of the controversy
The controversy regarding the campaign “Real beauty” was online i.e. social media sites.
The company published an ad in 2011 for promoting their body washes by showing three
females with diversified skin tone side by side. The ad included before and after images of the
cracked and smooth skin. Along with this, in 2017 Dove published second video for its body
lotion on its Facebook page under the same campaign. In this video, there was a black female
removing her t-shirt to show a white female, who later removes her t-shirt for revealing the
Asian female. This entire campaign was criticized by the audience as they considered it
offended. The nature of this controversy was online. Customers criticized the campaign by
accusing it of racism leading to affect the brand value and image of Dove in the market ((Taylor,
Johnston & Whitehead, 2016).