Dove has long shown an impressive ability to have it both ways: encouraging women to respect their natural beauty while also selling them a litany of beauty-enhancement products. Now, the Unilever brand is going even further, essentially saying every aspect of its industry is a scam.
In this new spot—the newest of several marketing stunts inspired by the success of the brand’s “Real Beauty Sketches”—we see women being offered an unbranded “beauty patch” that will help them generally look and feel better. Via Adweek
You may see where this is headed, but watch the video before I spoil it further:
Since this is an ad for Dove and not some sort of double-blind lab experiment on the placebo effect, it’s easy to predict that the women involved would end up feeling inspired and motivated to toss aside the crutches of products that claim to reduce the impact of aging and other inevitable forces.
Sure enough, upon the big reveal that the beauty patch is a powerless MacGuffin, instead of feeling misled or naive, one participant calls it “a life-altering experience.”
All of the women quickly absorb the lesson, reacting with a lack of bitterness reminiscent of when Dorothy Gale learned she could have left Oz five minutes after arriving.
Ad of the Day: Dove’s ‘Beauty Patch’ Seeks to Empower Women by Fooling Them http://t.co/WXzNAcjJ55
— Will Corry (@slievemore) April 10, 2014