Hoo boy, I'm surprised that this NYT story has not gotten more traction. In short, Unilever has gotten great PR and good kudos from their "Real Beauty" campaign for Dove, it's a great campaign and it makes a very valid point about the impact of advertising on self image. Their work for Axe? Not so much, unless the goal is to further the image issues the "Real Beauty" campaign is trying to address. Key quote:
Hypocrisy? So says the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, a consumer group better known for its efforts to keep junk food ads off children’s television. The organization is encouraging people to write letters to Unilever asking it to “ax the Axe campaign.”
This is a great example of two things. First, in the same way we've seen news increasingly "bleed" from one geographic area to another, we'll see the same thing happen between brands and campaigns. In the not-too-distant past, it was conceivable to create news in one city or country that wouldn't garner regional or global interest. Today? No. News knows no geographic or chronographic boundaries, and soon brand managers will have to take this into account as well. Second, I think we are going to see companies take a hard look at how their cause related marketing and advertising fits in across their entire corporation -- as the Dove example shows, a good campaign mirrored with work that undoes the first work looks a lot like hypocrisy. But hey, it's worked pretty well for the cigarette companies, right?
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