The Real Beauty Campaign Paper

From face-to-face selling to the internet selling, the advertisement had been the fundamental form of marketing strategy. It allowed the corporations to promote their products and services and build their unique brand name. Since the development of the World Wide Web, there had been a shift of advertising platforms. Instead of the printing out fliers and purchasing newspaper spaces, advertisers took the advantage of the growing internet users to post advertisement contents on the internet. The percentage of U.S. adults who used at least one social media site increased from 5% in 2005 to 69% in 2016 (Pew Research Center, 2016). The ad campaigns had significant results. Because of the increased use of social media, the shift towards social media

In oppose to the central route of persuasion which provided facts and details of the product itself, the peripheral route of persuasion had a stronger impact on persuasion because of the emotional effects of the advertisement. The Real Beauty campaign didn’t sell its products directly to the audience. In fact, it didn’t even mention any of the Dove products in any advertisement of the campaign. It simply used “average” people in its advertisements to increase the likelihood that “average” people would purchase Dove’s products due to the personal connections and the similarities between the models and the targeted audience. The campaign was considered authentic and true because it showed the perfections and the flaws of an individual. According to Rei Inamoto, the Vice President of AKQA, “‘Authenticity’ is the new ‘storytelling’ of advertising. The beauty of this campaign is that it’s using the power of its brand to reflect and celebrate the authenticity of its audience—women—by showcasing real people. In the digital age of radical transparency, brands can’t hide behind their own stories anymore. This campaign did—and continues to—reflect the truth by putting the scale of the brand to use. ‘Evolution of Beauty’ and ‘Real Beauty Sketches’ are the two extensions under this campaign that really leveraged the notion of transparency and authenticity of the digital