So, What happens when an east-bound brand image hits a west-bound brand experience?

Something kinda messy. This story isn’t exactly new, but a brand’s mis-steps are hard to erase from consumers’ minds and it’s a great case study of the way social media plays a truly powerful role in raising awareness and effecting change.

Like many corporate giants, Unilever is dedicated to being a good corporate citizen and neighbor. But when you’re a multi-brand company, it’s hard to keep all those brand value ducks in a neat row. Not so recently, Dove (a Unilever brand) launched its “Campaign for Real Beauty,” a campaign aimed at raising the self-esteem of women and helping the world understand that “the media and advertising set an unrealistic standard of beauty that most women can’t ever achieve.” Very cool. But, let’s not forget that the same company that makes Dove—which is widening “today’s stereotypical view of beauty” and inspires women—also makes Axe deodorant body spray, which thinks “getting the girl has never been easier.” The problem (aside from the obvious) is that the “girl” the Axe man is getting is not the inspired girl with the widened view of beauty, its the unrealistically hot chick who’s beauty most women can’t ever achieve.

There couldn’t be two more diametrically opposed brands living under one roof. Unilever’s biggest problem is that today’s consumers are brilliant and see through the advertising veil. They also talk to and trust each other, making viral messaging infinitely more persuasive to consumer opinion than a campaign spot.

So when Dove puts out this film…

…the world responds with its own message…

…and on a completely different level with this…

…which resulted in this.

Consumers have the loudest voice they’ve ever had. Listen up!

Tags: brand campaign, brand experience, brand image, social media marketing

This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Creative, Marketing, Media. 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.