Let’s make a deal Dove, advertising agencies will quit enhancing models when you quit:
1. Hiring them to groom your products’ brands in a way that’s a wee bit detached from the reality of their benefit at a scientifically established physiological level.
2. Remove all colors and perfumes that mask the true look and smell of your product and its chemical constituents.
3. Featuring product photography that represents an idealized version of a pristine bar of soap vs. the dinged and dented bar that usually comes out of the box we purchase.
4. Using music in your videos that predisposes me to feel you’re warm and friendly, when in fact you’re a cubicle farm corporation populated by stressed, overworked, and often grumpy people like the rest of us.
5. Ironically hiring an agency to create a video about deceptive agency practices made by an agency who in the very act of making this video is practicing the deception of (subtextually) claiming it doesn’t practice such deception itself. (The mirror in a mirror effect of that fine sentence made me effin woozy.)
Look, i know we as a society run a head trip on women–we do it to men too, in ways that get far less attention.
As the father of a six-year old girl, I want her to grow up with a healthy body image, and exaggerated representations of beauty ideals isn’t helping. But honestly, this is what humans do and always have done since Neanderthals began dabbing colored mud on their faces.
And yes, i understand you’re just trying “to cultivate a conversation about our values”, but if we want to be truly consistent with this effort to “keep it real”, let’s ban all make-up, deodorant, perfume, mouthwash, Spanx, the slimming effects of black, contact lenses, push-up bras, whitening toothpastes . . . since they also mask the true reality of how women appear and smell.
But whatever we do, Dove, please stop perpetuating this farce that you’re above it all, when in fact all you’re really doing with this pseudo-moralizing is trying to sell us more damn soap.
Aside from these few quibbles, Ogilvy/Toronto, I really enjoyed your video.
Be bold and prosper.
-Rick Julian