DOVE'S AD MAKEOVER
Ogilvy & Mather's online app for Dove applies the term 'makeover' to advertising rather than people. It aims to "replace bad ads with feel-good messages".
Image: Dove's "Ad Makeover" aims to create less room for negative targeted advertising.
Weight-loss supplements, the secret to a bigger bust, the latest Hollywood diet... these are just some of the targeted advertising we see every day on blogs and websites like Google and Facebook.
Ogilvy & Mather, UK’s latest campaign “The Ad Makeover” for Dove aims to eradicate these “negative” messages and invites users in Australia and Brazil to share positive slogans using a Facebook app.
“Ads like these prey on your insecurities and make you feel bad,” says Dove. “This application gives you the power to displace feel-bad ads with messages that help women feel beautiful instead. It works like this: You pick a message. You choose the target audience for your message. Then Dove starts outbidding the negative ads for ad space, letting women see your positive message instead.”
The campaign hopes to inject some optimism onto the internet with messages like: “The perfect bum is the one you’re sitting on”, “Be your beautiful self” and “Your birthday suit suits you”.
The app doesn’t actually replace the negative ads from Facebook. Users who opt into the app can create their own uplifting images, for which Dove then essentially purchases ad space for, thus leaving less room for others who have less encouraging messages for your body – or any other advertiser for that matter.
The Ad Makeover is part of the worldwide Dove “Campaign for Real Beauty”, which has been ongoing since 2004 and spans print, television, digital and outdoor advertising. Some of you may remember “Evolution” by Ogilvy & Mather, Toronto, which premiered at the Super Bowl and was also featured in Lürzer’s Archive Vol. 1/2007.
The spot for the Self Esteem Fund, established by Dove, went viral. Its tagline: “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted” gave a new twist to the hitherto rigid ideas about Ideal beauty.
The video showed a rather unassuming girl in front of the camera who, thanks to all the “work” done on her face, including hairstyling, make-up and CGI, is able to pout down radiantly from a billboard as the perfect-looking girl.
Video: Dove "The Ad Makeover" campaign by Ogilvy & Mather
Image: Dove "Too many wrinkles to be in an anti-aging ad?" by Ogilvy & Mather, Chicago. Photographed by Annie Leibovitz (featured in Lürzer’s Archive Vol. 3/2007).
See campaigns for Dove previously published in our print magazine on our online archive.
