Beauty Campaigns have been reaching women from the time formal advertising came about. Dove - a company that has been around for a long time - started a beauty campaign to bring new customers in. Normally the ads for beauty products revolve around how their products was different from other, make you cleaner then others, or did not leave behind residues. This used to be what could only fit in a 30 second ad on television. However with the invention of the internet, and the idea that videos can now go viral, advisements can start using different marketing techniques to reach more people. This is what Dove did with their “evolve” campaign. In this ad, Dove used an idea that would play with peoples’ insecurities.
The before and after pictures, above, does not come close to looking like the same person, and the video (below) explains why.
The video opens with a model sitting staring at the camera, and then a black screen with the slow appearing word “evolution.” When first watching this, you think the evolution is going to have to do with the make up and how that changes her appearance. She starts to be dolled up, and a flawless face starts to appear (all while during this process she looks bored and dull.) The fast time lapse during the actual picture taking time is nothing compared to the fast passed changes that occur during the editing of the photo. It is, in a way scary, watching how the photo editor was able to extend the women’s neck, and enlarge her eyes and the arc of her eyebrows. It was as if I was watching animated plastic surgery. They even slim down her face, and brighten her skin tone, I think (not really sure because how of much everything changed) that her nose was the only thing untouched. The ad then closes with “no wonder our perception of beauty is distorted.” This ad highlights the scary fact that the people that we think are beautiful are not even real people. Rather they are edited people.
This ad plays on most women’s insecurities. Women in print ads or commercials are the people that deemed to be the most beautiful. This campaign was made at a time when there was a big cry out about showing real women, and how the way models were being portrayed was causing many women and girls to go to extreme measures to try to look like these models. For example, becoming anorexic. That is why I care about this. This Dove promotion ad, is not about their products rather relieving the truth about how they value the beauty of real women, something we should all strive to do. I am part of the map that Dove was tries to reach. Women who are going up under the impression that this is beauty, and they are trying to reshape how we think of models and ads, make us realize that natural is not “distorted.”
In relation to this who am I? I am the women crying out for people to realize that natural beauty is more important then trying to look like the people on television. I am trying to find myself and this allows me to see that who I am, is enough. I do not need computer program to make me beautiful- because in a way that is false advertising. It is also so impactful, how a simple word like “evolution” takes on such a deep meaning. There is the evolution of the women in this commercial, and there is the need for evolution in the way that we think.
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