What damage might some well-intentioned idiot do to your brand?
There’s a big stink brewing in the beauty business. Dove, with its Campaign for Real Beauty, has a very popular ad which shows how a photograph of a, shall we say, normal-looking woman is transformed into an impossibly beautiful glamour queen. Now it seems that a freelance photography retoucher, working for a photographer, working for an ad agency, working for Unilever, Dove’s owner, boasted to a journalist that he’d retouched some of Dove’s photographs of ordinary women used in their wildly successful promotional campaigns. The retoucher says his remarks were taken out of context. The New Yorker magazine is adamant they were not. Dove will have to mount a massive recovery programme to avoid massive damage to its basic proposition. Expect some very public executions.
But the real question for me is why anyone associated with the Dove campaign would even contemplate having photographs retouched, for whatever reason, however well intentioned. It was a monumentally stupid mistake. It also illustrates that everyone working with your brand (staff, suppliers, distributors and subcontractors), everyone must understand what your brand stands for and, by implication, what to do and what not to do.
What damage might some well-intentioned idiot do to your brand?
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May 13th, 2008 at 11:35 am
It’s interesting too, to think that even if the comments about retouching were made in jest, which I doubt they would have been, any element of doubt will put consumers on their guard. We are only as strong as our weakest link, including subcontractors, suppliers, staff, and others. Whether well-intentioned or malicious, stepping beyond the given boundaries can cause huge problems. I will watch this space with interest.
May 13th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Being a bit of a photography enthusiast myself, I must say that retouching is not always done to mislead people, & infact Dove could mount a good case to say that the retouching was only to remove optical & colour problems of the photograph to make it as real as possbile.
ie, blame the equipment/technology & state that the retouching was not really a retouch but more so a fix. I think it can be pulled off if done smartly.
Besides, everyone does re-touching since the dawn of photography so its a pretty levelled playground?
Those days it was chemical, today its electronic, same thing really…
May 13th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Z
That’s effectively what the contractor said, too. The problem is that Dove’s brand is built in part on a powerful anti-retouching message.
May 16th, 2008 at 9:33 pm
Absolutely everyone in print advertising retouches. It’s not a dirty word. I can assure, with even the most beautiful people there’s always a little tweaking.
May 18th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
[…] post focused on advertising photo’s for Dove’s ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’ series allegedly being touched-up and Mark’s post revealed just how inaccurate nutritional claims on food packaging can be with […]
May 20th, 2008 at 6:56 am
Update: I was at a family wedding at the weekend, and the Dove kerfuffle came up several times in conversation. Blokes mainly weren’t that fussed, but the women on the whole were surprised by Dove allowing this to happen. I should add that many would fit into the 40+ category, attractive based on style, inner beauty and personality rather than just being young and slim, which makes them Dove’s primary market.
June 4th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Women are from Venus - Men are from Mars! Your family wedding comment is exactly what I’d expect. Most men I’ve spoken to about this see if from a technical perspective whereas women tend to see it as an integrity and trust issue, not a technicality. Big difference. And when trust is broken it may never be mended. The seed of doubt is out there, and always will be.