Seriously!? We can't stop being cynical, hyper-analytical computer nerds for 5 minutes?
This isn't a study. There's no academic rigor to apply. It is a commentary. It's a commentary that almost anyone who has either been a woman or been in a relationship with one can probably identify with or relate to.
And yes, it is advertising. I have no doubt that no one walked away from that video not realizing it was advertising. So what? Advertising isn't allowed to say something positive, or dare I say, honest?
What? Is it because they're a multinational and not a startup?
> It's a commentary that almost anyone who has either been a woman or been in a relationship with one can probably identify with or relate to.
I'd go further and say that everyone who has been a person can identify with. It's a human thing to notice things about yourself and think that people also notice it about you, because you know yourself better.
I realized years ago that I didn't look at faces as a sum of parts, when a friend I knew for more than a year told me his nose was too wide. I looked at it and realized that, indeed, it was a bit wide. I was stunned that I saw him every day for more than a year and had never noticed his nose.
It's not limited to the same sex. A girl I know had visibly crooked teeth, and at some point she had them fixed. When I saw her a few months later, I knew something was different, but I couldn't put my finger on it until someone mentioned it.
Or maybe I'm just super-unperceptive, I don't know.
It's brilliant because it is framed as if this is some kind of informal experiment, which is all that is needed to tap into the insecurities of women that have self-esteem issues. Even rational women will be affected by this (just as rational men would be should it be targeted at men).
The brilliant thing about this advert is that it captures the audience with intrigue, and then breaks down the "facts" while at the same time telling women to really feel more beautiful than they think they are. What this does is it gets buy-in from the audience so that when the advert proposes soap and cleanliness to further the idea of beauty.
In one study[0] about persuasion, it was found that when you try to advertise or sell a product, making statements or representing a world view that the audience can agree with first will make them more likely to agree with you when you then pitch them the product.
As for the "honesty" of this, a real study is posted elsewhere in this thread that points to the contrary.
The sketch artist could have intentionally drawn the women as slightly disproportionate from reality just to make this piece more polemic. I don't see how that was prevented?
Yup; this is a "great" idea that falls apart when you think about it a bit.
The artist knows perfectly well what the intention is, and which group is which.
ALSO, the results are going to be skewed by standard rules of politeness -- even given a person with a perfectly balanced view of themselves, the way they describe themselves to a stranger surely should avoid being too praising (or they'd seem narcissistic), whereas someone else's description of them would be skewed to the positive side, also out of politeness -- who knows if the person being drawn is going to hear this description later, or is a friend of the artist, etc.?
It would be easy to do this better.
Imagine if this were (seemingly) a study about the value and accuracy of police sketches. Use multiple sketch artists, and let them know their sketches are going to be tested by IDing from a large lineup.
Some sources will be self-describing (i.e., someone very familiar with the face) and others will be someone with only a short encounter with the subject.
This is a plausible (fake) study, and the remaining problems (with the real intent) are much, much fewer.
Surely you're not suggesting that this was (or should have been) some kind of scientific study? For all we know, they might have shot another 20 women who looked much better in the self-description than the stranger description.
It's just an interesting visual way to tell a story about body awareness. And of course, the whole point is to reinforce the Dove marketing approach, which is still a lot more healthy and wholesome than the typical cosmetic pitch (i.e. you're not beautiful unless you look like a skinny white photoshopped supermodel)
Agree - especially given that this was funded by the Campaign for Real Beauty, and it wouldn't exactly have supported Dove's ad campaign if the pictures looked the same or the sketch was reversed.
Please tell me that I'm not the only one astounded by the kind of doublethink that's being taken at face value en masse. This is a beauty company, and it's not giving a message of "you're actually more beautiful than you think", it's highlighting how insecure people are about their looks, and presenting their brand as the solution, now SOCIALLY as well as just aesthetically.
It's masterful, but it's more of the same. Just more subtly.
It'd be more grating if their main products were make-up; I think they're mostly on the soap/shampoo side of things -- which can arguably be more about "just be clean and you'll look nice" as opposed to "paint this gunk all over yourself and then you'll look nice".
As far as ad campaigns go, I have been impressed by Dove's work in blending very interesting techniques together to give people an "Aha!" moment of new perspective. This one and the photoshop plugin are for me the most surprising, but the entire "Real Beauty" campaign is well done.
Yes, and in the next commercial for Axe, women are objectified and treated as total objects by the men than desire them.
Both Dove and Axe are Unilever brands; they just target different seems of the population with messages that they know will resonate. It's great marketing, not social good.
Heh reminds me a project i made 2 years ago.
A local newspaper asked me for an artist intervention on a full page.
To keep it short:
I send my parents to a professional photofit guy from our national police (he never saw me, nor knows me, nor has seen a pic etc.) and made my parents describe me to him.
It's a work about identity, how the people that are very close to you see you and ofc the obvious link photofits have with the medium newspaper.
Aw, I opened it thinking it would be interesting to compare the fit with your photo, but there was no photo of you. This is just a sketch of some imaginary guy, then. What's interesting about that?
Advertising & marketing strategies to women are usually implicitly negative and designed to tie their value/desirability/self-worth to the additive product being sold or an unattainable ideal that the product hopes to fulfill. This is the complete opposite of that. So, marketing and unscientific approach aside, I applaud it on that basis alone.
I see my face everyday and know all the details that make it ugly. I barely pay attention to such details on the average strangers face. The times I've been asked to describe someone for the police I was always surprised at how little I remembered about their looks. So I think this little "experiment" more shows the fallibity of eye witnesses.
Scientific research in this area points in the opposite direction: woman, like man, see themselves as more attractive then they actually are. In the following study, photos of the subjects were merged with photos of more attractive and less attractive people of the same gender. The subjects identified themselves more often in the more attractive photos rather than the less attractive ones, and even more often than in the non-adulterated photos: http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/nicholas.epley/EpleyWhitchur...
I never knew that sketch artists were able to make such accurate drawing from verbal descriptions alone. Every time I've seen this on TV the interviewee is able to see and correct the developing image.
Those wondering about the multiple ways this could be biased, keep in mind that by far the easiest way, in which everybody thinks that they are being honest, is by publication or "reporting" bias.
[+] [-] nateabele|13 years ago|reply
This isn't a study. There's no academic rigor to apply. It is a commentary. It's a commentary that almost anyone who has either been a woman or been in a relationship with one can probably identify with or relate to.
And yes, it is advertising. I have no doubt that no one walked away from that video not realizing it was advertising. So what? Advertising isn't allowed to say something positive, or dare I say, honest?
What? Is it because they're a multinational and not a startup?
[+] [-] StavrosK|13 years ago|reply
I'd go further and say that everyone who has been a person can identify with. It's a human thing to notice things about yourself and think that people also notice it about you, because you know yourself better.
I realized years ago that I didn't look at faces as a sum of parts, when a friend I knew for more than a year told me his nose was too wide. I looked at it and realized that, indeed, it was a bit wide. I was stunned that I saw him every day for more than a year and had never noticed his nose.
It's not limited to the same sex. A girl I know had visibly crooked teeth, and at some point she had them fixed. When I saw her a few months later, I knew something was different, but I couldn't put my finger on it until someone mentioned it.
Or maybe I'm just super-unperceptive, I don't know.
[+] [-] instakill|13 years ago|reply
It's brilliant because it is framed as if this is some kind of informal experiment, which is all that is needed to tap into the insecurities of women that have self-esteem issues. Even rational women will be affected by this (just as rational men would be should it be targeted at men).
The brilliant thing about this advert is that it captures the audience with intrigue, and then breaks down the "facts" while at the same time telling women to really feel more beautiful than they think they are. What this does is it gets buy-in from the audience so that when the advert proposes soap and cleanliness to further the idea of beauty.
In one study[0] about persuasion, it was found that when you try to advertise or sell a product, making statements or representing a world view that the audience can agree with first will make them more likely to agree with you when you then pitch them the product.
As for the "honesty" of this, a real study is posted elsewhere in this thread that points to the contrary.
[0] http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/facbios/file/10-0352%20The%20R...
[+] [-] wdr1|13 years ago|reply
Hang on. Dove is owned by Unilever, a company that also owns Axe body spray. What kind of ads does Axe run? Well, here's a few:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9tWZB7OUSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpTGaENQNNg
In other words, they're selling the Barbie stereotype with their left hand & selling the anti-Barbie stereotype with their right.
I think it's perfectly acceptable to call bullshit on a company that does both.
[+] [-] exit|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] newnewnew|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Breefield|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jtheory|13 years ago|reply
The artist knows perfectly well what the intention is, and which group is which.
ALSO, the results are going to be skewed by standard rules of politeness -- even given a person with a perfectly balanced view of themselves, the way they describe themselves to a stranger surely should avoid being too praising (or they'd seem narcissistic), whereas someone else's description of them would be skewed to the positive side, also out of politeness -- who knows if the person being drawn is going to hear this description later, or is a friend of the artist, etc.?
It would be easy to do this better.
Imagine if this were (seemingly) a study about the value and accuracy of police sketches. Use multiple sketch artists, and let them know their sketches are going to be tested by IDing from a large lineup.
Some sources will be self-describing (i.e., someone very familiar with the face) and others will be someone with only a short encounter with the subject.
This is a plausible (fake) study, and the remaining problems (with the real intent) are much, much fewer.
[+] [-] friendly_chap|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] LeeHunter|13 years ago|reply
It's just an interesting visual way to tell a story about body awareness. And of course, the whole point is to reinforce the Dove marketing approach, which is still a lot more healthy and wholesome than the typical cosmetic pitch (i.e. you're not beautiful unless you look like a skinny white photoshopped supermodel)
[+] [-] gonehome|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cristianpascu|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strangestchild|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Zimahl|13 years ago|reply
My thought was that we, as individuals, don't really know what we look like. Sure we see ourselves in the mirror but how much detail do we see?
I see my wife all the time and could probably have a pretty accurate sketch drawn of her but if I had one drawn of me it would be pretty far off.
[+] [-] chiaro|13 years ago|reply
It's masterful, but it's more of the same. Just more subtly.
[+] [-] jtheory|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] waterlesscloud|13 years ago|reply
Genuine, deep emotion used to make an association with a product.
And the emotional experience is real, regardless of the marketing.
This will be a super-successful ad, way beyond their work on this campaign so far.
[+] [-] Colliwinks|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] instakill|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aray|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flyt|13 years ago|reply
Both Dove and Axe are Unilever brands; they just target different seems of the population with messages that they know will resonate. It's great marketing, not social good.
[+] [-] moron4hire|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mikeash|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] notindexed|13 years ago|reply
To keep it short:
I send my parents to a professional photofit guy from our national police (he never saw me, nor knows me, nor has seen a pic etc.) and made my parents describe me to him.
It's a work about identity, how the people that are very close to you see you and ofc the obvious link photofits have with the medium newspaper.
I removed it from my webpage (www.medium.lu) as i keep only a selection online so i exported a .pdf for u if anyone cares to check it out: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25637921/hn/identified.p...
Cheers
[+] [-] StavrosK|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dpolaske|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] orangethirty|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spinchange|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdavis703|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rodelrod|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tocomment|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mverwijs|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] epo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jsmcgd|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] opminion|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] weirdchickalert|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kaybe|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] colinhowe|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jtheory|13 years ago|reply