CCM320: Integrated Marketing Communication Report on Dove's Campaign

This report provides an in-depth analysis of Dove's 'Real Beauty' campaign, examining its integrated marketing communication (IMC) strategy. The report begins with an introduction to IMC and its role in modern marketing, highlighting how Dove's campaign aimed to redefine beauty standards. It de...Read More

Running Head: IMC
Integrated Marketing Communication
Report
System04104
8/15/2019

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Introduction
The real beauty campaign of Dove was the famous marketing strategy. The Strategy of
almost change the promotion strategy of large companies such as Proctor & Gamble (P&G)
that copied the same ‘real beauty’ campaign of Dove. The present work is about the ‘real
beauty’ campaign of Dove that changed the trend of advertising and promotion.
Answer-1
Integrated marketing communication (IMC) is almost used by every modern organisation to
boost the sales of the product, to increase the profit and gain competitive advantage over
other players in the industry. IMC ensures that all forms of communications and message of
the company are linked together. IMC is a part of company promotional campaign of
organisation that mixed variety of communication tools for advertising or promotion of the
product (Darley, et. al., 2016).
‘The real beauty’ campaign of Dove was conducted after a study on more than 3000 women
in 10 countries. The main objective of this study was to know the priorities and interest of
women about the beauty. The billboards that include tick box, was first debuted in Canada
and then after across the USA and UK market. This campaign attracts large number of people
in the tick box survey that further enhance the sales of Dove products (Amaral, 2017). The
message of this campaign was that girls and women to understand that their power and
beauty is not rely on a cosmetic tube or cream, rather than it is based on their own
personalities and power. This positive IMC plan of the company boosted the sales of Dove
products and it was one of the famous campaigns of Dove. The IMC campaign of Dove
realised many women that their beauty is what they are and it is not determine by a tube or
cream or any cosmetic products (Feng, Chen, and He, 2019).
The positive message and communication of the company through IMC helps the company to
establish a strong and positive relationship with the people. The term ‘relationship marketing’
is the major concept of IMC that create a bond of loyalty and commitment between the
company and customers (Ots and Nyilasy, 2015). This bond further helps the company to
gain competitive advantage over the competitors. The positive IMC campaign helps the
company to boost its revenue and profit. IMC also helps to reduce the waste of money as it
removes the duplication in graphics and photography areas.

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Answer-2
IMC is a strategic and promotional marketing function that targets a group of audience of
specific customer groups and deliver consistent and persuasive message that enforce the
buyer to make decisions about buying the products (Fill and Turnbull, 2016). It also helps to
create a positive and strong relationship between the company and customer through positive
messaging and communication ways. To develop integrated marketing communication
campaign, every business organisation follows the key four steps, which are as follow:
1. Outside in and developing communications: The first step in IMC is to identify the
proper way of communication strategy. As a part of marketing communication, it is
really crucial that which type of media can help the company to spread the message to
mass number of customers (Fill and Turnbull, 2016). Here, there are number of
choices for the organisation such as communication through e-mail marketing,
content marketing through blogs and website content, social media marketing, etc.
Dove used the billboard and tick box method to communicate the message to its
customers. The target of the company is to viral it message through social media
when people, especially the drivers watch the billboard. The company target the
motorists and asked them about the features of the women, who were displayed by the
company on the billboard. The motorists share the message on social media and viral
the message of Dove. This help the company to target the mass number of customers
through billboards and social media, even the company only promoted the message on
billboard through tick box. Although, using the billboard and social media, company
enhanced its product sale from $2.5 billion to $4 billion.
2. Comprehensive and detailed knowledge of consumers: Once company determines
its media channel for broadcasting the message to the audience, the next step is to
collect detail knowledge about the consumers. This is the second step where company
select an appropriate method through which company can target its audience and
retrieve information about their audience. For this the company needs to focus on
three factors; audience, content, and cadence (Finne and Grönroos, 2017). Here, Dove
targeted the motorists in the USA and asked them about the features of women. It is
also important that how people want to get the message and through which medium.
The company knows that it will be viral on social media. The viral message helped
the company to increase the awareness about product among the people and it also
started the trend in which women was portrayed differently by the company. This

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campaign was successful to leave a social message for the society about the women
beauty (Kitchen and Burgmann, 2015). This shows the accurate planning of the
company to launch its marketing campaign and to whom they want to target.
3. Brand Contact Perspective: It is important to understand the mind-set of customers
that why they want to buy your products and what make customer to buy a certain
product. It is also noticeable that some customers want to use extended decision-
making process before buying a product while some customers engage them at very
low level of involvement before buying a product. Most of the customers follow a
common or basic pattern of buying. The intention of buying behaviour, which
involves variety of decisions called decision-making process of customers (Key and
Czaplewski, 2017). Here, Dove used the mentality of women about the beauty and
asked them that the real beauty lie in their self, rather than a tube or cream or any
cosmetic products. This shows the real intention of Dove about the women and
women love the message of Dove. This encouraged the women to buy the products of
Dove that further lead to increase in its sales volume.
4. Implementation of plan and centralized coordination: The last step in IMC is to
implement the plan and get the result. This step involves establish a centralized
coordination system between the message and audience. Dove received the response
of people through various channels that shows how the company targeted it audience.
This step also needs to monitor what content deliver to whom and at what time
through which media channel. This will help the company to ensure whether the right
audience has been targeted through proper message and media channel (Luxton, Reid,
and Mavondo, 2015). This will help to create a strong relationship with the customers.
The ‘Real beauty Campaign’ of Dove helps to establish a social bonding with the
people and increase the confidence among the women customers. The campaign also
engages the customers in various buying cycle that increased the sales of Dove
products (Taylor, Johnston, and Whitehead, 2016). Even though, the competitor of
Unilever P&G also adopted the same marketing strategy to increase its sales.
Answer-3
Dove removed the stereotype of people about the ‘women beauty’ through its ‘real beaut’
campaign. The SWOT (Strength, weakness, opportunities, and threats) of this campaign are
as follow:

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STRENGTHS
 Inspiring advertising
 Create positive self-image
 Removed the stereotype of people
about the beauty
 Establish a strong public relation
with the customers
 Emotional appeal with customers
 Costless Publicity
WEAKNESS
 It was the contradiction from other
products of Dove.
 Dove was criticized for its hypocrisy
 The major focus of the company was
on real beauty rather than its product.
 Objectification
 Dove is more identified by Soap by its
customers rather than any other
product.
OPPORTUNITIES
 Dove can target the male customers
through this campaign
 Dove can also promote its product
through such type of campaign
 Innovative thinking
 Create new slogans for its other
products and can use the same
strategy.
THREATS
 This campaign was involved high
market risk.
 This campaign was easily copied by
P&G.
 Increased the competition
 The campaign shows another message
that Dove is a brand for ‘Fat girls’ etc.
Strength: The major strength of this campaign was that it removed the stereotype thinking of
people about the beauty. It was an emotional appeal of the company to the people and asked
them that the actual beauty is their inner beauty of their natural beauty (Drake, 2017). This
was really an inspiring advertising by the company that helped the company to establish a
strong relationship with its customers. The campaign also helps the company to get the free
of cost publicity through social media.
Weakness: The major weakness of the campaign was that this campaign was not applied on
all the products of Dove. It was designed for Dove soap. However, it has been found that
company was failed to focus on its product rather it was mainly concentrated on natural
beauty or real beauty of women. Dove was criticized by many people for its hypocrisy
(Goins, 2016).

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Opportunities: Dove can target its male customer through the same type of campaign. This
campaign can also be beneficial in promotion of other products of the company. This
creativity shows the innovative ideas of the company. The company can use new slogans and
marketing strategy to target the male customer with same strategy.
Threats: The major threat of this campaign is that it can be easily copied by any other
competitor. Even P&G use the same campaign for its product promotion. It also increases the
competition in the industry. Even this campaign involved high risks for the Dove; it was
helpful for the company to increase the overall sale of its product.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it can be said that the campaign of Dove changed the trend of advertising and
promotion in the industry. However, this campaign was very successful as it increased the
sale of Dove products because of its emotional appeal and a positive thinking that removed
the stereotype of people about ‘beauty’. However, some people criticize the campaign
because it was mainly focused on real beauty rather than products and this campaign can
easily be copied by competitors that increase the competition in the industry.

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References
Amaral, A.C. (2017) Dove Real Beauty Campaign: A Local Perspective [online]. Available
at: https://run.unl.pt/bitstream/10362/25593/1/Amaral_2017.pdf [Accessed: 15/08/2019].
Darley, W.K., Dall’Olmo Riley, F., Singh, J. and Blankson, C. (2016) Brand building via
integrated marketing communications. The Routledge Companion to Contemporary Brand
Management, pp.201-217.
Drake, V.E. (2017) The impact of female empowerment in advertising
(femvertising). Journal of Research in Marketing, 7(3), pp.593-599.
Feng, Y., Chen, H. and He, L. (2019) Consumer Responses to Femvertising: A Data-Mining
Case of Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” on YouTube. Journal of Advertising, pp.1-10.
Fill, C. and Turnbull, S.L. (2016) Marketing communications: brands, experiences and
participation. USA: Pearson.
Finne, Å. and Grönroos, C. (2017) Communication-in-use: customer-integrated marketing
communication. European Journal of Marketing, 51(3), pp.445-463.
Goins, K.E. (2016) Dove campaign for real beauty [online]. Available at:
https://ir.ua.edu/bitstream/handle/123456789/2647/file_1.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
[Accessed: 05/8/2019].
Key, T.M. and Czaplewski, A.J. (2017) Upstream social marketing strategy: An integrated
marketing communications approach. Business Horizons, 60(3), pp.325-333.
Kitchen, P.J. and Burgmann, I. (2015) Integrated marketing communication: making it work
at a strategic level. Journal of Business Strategy, 36(4), pp.34-39.
Luxton, S., Reid, M. and Mavondo, F. (2015) Integrated marketing communication capability
and brand performance. Journal of Advertising, 44(1), pp.37-46.
Ots, M. and Nyilasy, G. (2015) Integrated marketing communications (IMC): Why does it
fail?: An analysis of practitioner mental models exposes barriers of IMC
implementation. Journal of Advertising Research, 55(2), pp.132-145.

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Taylor, J., Johnston, J. and Whitehead, K. (2016) A corporation in feminist clothing? Young
women discuss the dove ‘Real beauty’campaign. Critical Sociology, 42(1), pp.123-144.