Unilever continues to score with its “real beauty” Dove soap campaign and frank talk about age and beauty. Sales were up 10 percent in 2006, according to Information Resources. ABuzz around the ads include a major feature on NBC’s Today show spotlighting the ads’ real-world 50+ models. They range from 50 to 64 years old, come from a variety of career and professional backgrounds…and they all pose nude in the ads.

Nancy Etcoff, a Harvard Medical School psychologist who researches issues of perception of beauty, is an advisor to Unilever and was featured on the Today segment. She points to research showing 50+ women don’t see themselves in media:

We tested women in nine different countries, from 50 to 64, and we asked them, what do they think? Do they think the media’s doing a good job of representing their age? Overwhelmingly, over 90 percent said no, the media is not doing a good enough job at representing women 50 and over as they are. They said that this generation is different from any previous generation of women 50-plus. They’re active, they’re financially independent, they’re confident, they’re outspoken. They’re not seeing that out there. They feel invisible.

Unilever and agency Ogilvy & Mather have done a nice job infusing Dove marketing with the feeling of a movement. The 50+ ads are tied at the hip to the brand’s viral “Evolution” campaign, which questions societal notions of beauty via time-elapsed sequences showing what’s underneath the typical model shot.

Brenda Hodgson of Hill & Knowleton posts interesting comments on viral marketing here.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 9th, 2007 at 9:05 am and is filed under Advertising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.