Photo: WENN
Named after the stout-body bird, Dove, a personal care brand owned by Unilever, continues its aim to bridge the gap through the launch of its “Love Your Curls” campaign.
Inspired by the need of creating confidence and empowerment, Dove, and its “Real Beauty” campaign have weathered its fair share of criticism. As sales have climbed to record highs, the “Love Your Curls” initiative coincides with the brand’s reported admiration for coiffured cuties. In fact, they’re marketing the product with a children’s e-book of 22 poems, written by Ghana Must Go author, Taiye Selasi.
Do all these methods scream genius marketing strategy or can it be considered a movement in the making?
Dove products are manufactured all over the globe from Argentina to Germany to Mexico to right here in the United States. Being sold in more than 80 countries, the Dove brand has endeared itself alongside companies like Lane Bryant — who work hard to incorporate rarely used and identified consumers. Yet, in its attempt to shill a buck, the Dove brand fails to do something very important in delineating its difference from what it is marketing—placing black women at the center of the campaign.
As you can see for yourself in the video above, this ad is hardly revolutionary in how it effectively places women of different ethnicities in front of the camera. The key point to note is how the focus is primarily on mixed-race and white girls, who already are lauded socially for their curl textures. Vogue, another brand with questionable standards, even went so far as “validate” natural hair with an interesting essay. Our own Danielle Kwateng related her story to the Vogue piece, showcasing how, again, white media attempts to co-opt our own narrative to make it sound like they’ve given the OK.
While addressing the different hair styles of Dove’s audience, it fails to target the ones who catch the most hell for having curls in the first place. Women and young girls that have kinkier hair are conscientiously excluded from not only this ad, but the whole roll-out of Dove’s “Love Your Curls” strategy. The blatant denial of those whose naps are kinkier pushes the brand towards shilling status, as Dove attempts to highlight tried-and-true tools (satin bonnets and pillow cases) that have been used by tightly-coiffed women for centuries.
“We have to have these broader conversations about power and culture and beauty ideals in order to really understand why so many curly girls … six out of 10, don’t think their curls are beautiful,” said Taiye Selasi in a conversation with Huffington Post Live. No shots at all, but Selasi and her book comes from a respectable place. The highly regarded author, herself, experimented with a myriad of hairstyles from relaxed hair to Poetic Justice-style box braids. Dove, on the other hand, appears to not fully grasp its reach or understand the connotations of its marketing scheme.
Riding the wave of the tanning of America doesn’t guarantee one a free pass when it comes to black culture. Dove might’ve had a slick exec who saw that sales would go up if they just tailored a thing or two “for the black folks,” but it does not see itself as appropriating our hair care culture. The natural hair movement itself has been around for ages, as many women with curls have the scars in the workplace to show for it. Dove didn’t create a campaign to change the concept of what it means to have natural hair—it doubled-down on an attempt to capitalize the yearning need for the idea to be changed within the mainstream.
Dove’s ad did not stand up for the black professional who has been threatened with unemployment if they didn’t change their hairstyle. Dove did not make inroads for the black girl in school who gets called “dirty” by classmates who think she’s having a bad hair day. While Dove’s “Love Your Curls” campaign does get the conversation started, if the company chooses to continue to go down this road, then they need to be all in. From understanding that beauty is more than one executable standard, Dove, as well as other cosmetic companies, need to celebrate every style from nap to kink to curl.
If not, then it shall continue to be in a tangled weave of mismanaged expectations and experience a mass exodus of its customer base moving on to someone who does care about them.
[via New York Magazine, Huffington Post]
The post Does Dove’s Love For Curls Scream Marketing Or Movement?! appeared first on StyleBlazer.
