Dove Evolution
"No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted"
Dove Evolution Commercial
Media plays such a drastic role in people’s everyday lives, especially in today’s society. From our use of the Internet to our obsession with smartphones, the public is constantly bombarded with commercial after commercial and some of the things seen are not always truthful or uplifting. Women especially are targeted by advertisements. Whether it’s a new diet craze, exercise or beauty product, women are told they need to have these products to be beautiful. Dove’s Evolution commercial challenges this advertising trend, and it illustrates how the media skews people’s perceptions of beauty. But the real question is, why would Dove, a beauty brand, go to such extremes to make a commercial that puts down the advertising business? Dove wants women to feel beautiful for who they are and this will in turn cause them to trust Dove and buy their products. Dove has become a successful business because of their Campaign for Real Beauty and Movement for Self-Esteem, both empowering to women. With the Campaign for Real Beauty, Dove is changing the typical beauty commercial genre to focus on self-esteem rather than beauty ideals.
Dove’s main audience for the “Dove Evolution” commercial are women and girls. These are the people they want to buy their products and the people they feel will relate to this advertisement. In some way it could affect men, by showing them how real women do not look like the models in ads, but Dove’s main audience they’re trying to reach are women and girls. In the commercial, a woman is being photographed for a beauty advertisement that will be on a billboard. The model’s hair and make-up is done and then multiple photos are taken. The picture that is chosen is then drastically photoshoped and the photo no longer looks like the model. Dove wants to show their audience they do not believe in changing a woman’s appearance through photo shop as a means to make her more beautiful. By doing this, they get the audience to identify with their company. Women are identifying with Dove because they no longer want to be told how to look. They want to be considered beautiful just the way they are. This causes the audience to want to buy products from Dove. Dove can reach their audience through the rhetorical appeals of Ethos and Pathos.
The company uses Ethos by appealing to the audience’s character and morals. A large amount of women hate the way the media tells them how to look. According to Sturken and Cartwright, “Ideologies are systems of belief that exist within all cultures,” and the media has made ideologies of women something contrary from what it should be (245). The representation of women in today’s society is that a “beautiful” woman has full lips, big eyes, smooth skin, a large chest, and a small waist. These are some of the characteristics thrown at women and girls by advertisements. Dove can appeal to the morals of their audience by showing them how they do not believe those characteristics should make women beautiful. The audience may have the same morals and relate to Dove. Again, Dove is putting down the beauty advertisement industry, but at the same time they are making themselves seem more likeable and changing the typical standards for beauty ads. They are trying to relate to their audience on a more personal level. Since Dove makes advertisements themselves, they have the knowledge and facts about how to use photoshop, so it makes the reader believe what they’re saying and this makes them more credible. They also sell beauty products and so they have the credibility to determine what is beautiful. To the company Dove, being yourself is what is truly beautiful.
Not only does Dove use Ethos, they also use Pathos. Pathos plays an extremely important role in this advertisement. Dove does an exceptionally skillful job of playing to the emotions of their audience. Since their audience consists of women and girls, there is a chance that most of them have struggled with a self-esteem issue in their life. Women and girls tend to compare themselves to the models on television and on billboards and start to lose confidence. By Dove showing the audience how the model herself does not even look like the picture, it can give women a boost in their self-esteem. The audience now knows it’s unrealistic for them to try and look like the models in ads because nobody does. Since Dove plays on such a strong emotion like self-confidence, they are able to connect with the audience. The audience starts to trust Dove and will buy their products and join their beauty campaign. They trust Dove because the company is willing to put down beauty brands just to show their audience the truth. It’s a strategic and smart move by the company.
Through Dove’s commercial, they are reinventing typical beauty advertisements. The brand focuses more on self-esteem rather than on certain characteristics of a “beautiful” woman. In the article, “Ten Years In, Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ Seems to be Aging Well,” it is noted that their sales have gone from $2.5 billion in the inaugural year of the Campaign for Real Beauty to $4 billion in 2014 (Neff). This statistic shows how successful Dove has been due to changing the look of a typical beauty commercial. A persuasive device Dove uses in this commercial is loaded words because of how much they appeal to the audience’s emotions. At the end of the commercial, the words “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted,” comes across the screen and this plays to the emotions of the audience by telling them the media has the definition of beauty all wrong. "Distorted" means giving a false impression and so our view of beauty is misrepresented through advertisements. Our "perception of beauty is distorted" because beauty companies create unrealistic women in thier ads and commercials.
Visually, Dove does an exceptional job of keeping the audience’s attention on the model’s face. The company wants those watching the commercial to focus on everything happening to the model. In Molly Bang’s Picture This: How Pictures Work she claims, “The center of the page is the most effective ‘center of attention’. It is the point of greatest attraction” (234). Since Dove puts the model’s face in the center, the audience can’t take their eyes off of her and they are able to gather in all the information from the video. The audience can see how much makeup is being put on the model and how many features on her are being photo shopped. Dove wants the audience to see how different the model looks from her photograph on the billboard and then realize how fake advertisements can be.
The main context for this commercial has to deal with the culture and society the audience is in today. There are so many unrealistic expectations of women and the commercial plainly shows how the media distorts the way women look to make them “beautiful.” According to Pavel Zemliansky, “treating photos and other visuals not as simply objective representations of reality, but as persuasive creations designed to influence specific audiences” (212). Dove uses these photos and other visuals, like the simulation of photoshop, to show what “real” beauty looks like and its effect is extremely persuasive. Dove can show this commercial, have their audience sign up for the Campaign for Real Beauty and buy more of their products. In a seemingly damaging commercial, the company influenced their audience and created a better name and more profit for themselves.
Dove Real Beauty Sketches Commercial
Through visual representation as well as ideological shifts, Dove created this commercial to promote their Campaign for Real Beauty and change the standards for a typical beauty advertisement while still building up their own brand. The commercial has become effective by making the audience buy more products from Dove and join the campaign. Dove’s use of Ethos and Pathos helped them immensely in this commercial by affecting the emotions of their audience. Even though this commercial was made to support the company Dove and their sales, it has helped so many women and young girls become more confident in who they are and truly consider themselves beautiful.
Author's Note
Thinking about how I wanted to have my rhetorical analysis look, I decided it should represent the beauty brand Dove. I chose the background for this page to be Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty Ad. It depicts what the company stands for and I feel like it's a great representation of what I was saying in my rhetorical analysis. Although, I wanted the backgroud to be slightly covered up so that it wouldn't be too busy and overwhelming for the reader. I added the black blocks so that the writing would be easy to see and read. I chose the font because it was simple. I wanted the page to look clean and organized and so the blocks helped with that idea. I added the blue lines and heading to tie in with the blue from some of the pictures I put on the page. All of the pictures and videos I chose came from Dove advertisements or commercials. I really wanted to show how invested Dove is in their Campaign for Real Beauty and Movement for Self-Esteem.
By doing both the written and digital compositions for my rhetorical analysis, I learned that most things have some sort of rhetorical purpose. Whether it’s a commercial on television or a billboard, it’s trying to get you to feel a certain way. I had never done any kind of rhetorical analysis before this class and it has taught me to always be aware of the things I see and hear. I also learned a lot from doing my analysis on the Dove Evolution commercial. It's shown me how the media plays such a large part in our lives today and the huge impact it has on the way we live and see ourselves. Overall, I had a great time composing both the written paper and the digital page.
Works Cited
Bang, Molly. “Excerpts from ‘Picture This: How Pictures Work.’” Everything’s a Text. Eds. Dan Melzer and Deborah Coxwell-Teague. Boston: Rearson Education, Inc., 2011. 227-44.
Neff, Jack. “Ten Years In, Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ Seems to Be Aging Well.” Advertising Age. N.p., 22 Jan. 2014. Web. 12 Sept. 2015.
Piper, Tim. “Dove Evolution.” YouTube. YouTube, 06 Oct. 2006. Web. 11 Sept. 2015.
Sturken, Marita and Lisa Cartwright. “Excerpts from ‘Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture.’” Everything’s a Text. Eds. Dan Melzer and Deborah Coxwell-Teague. Boston: Rearson Education, Inc., 2011. 244-51.
“The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty.” Dove. Unilever, 2015. Web. 12 Sept. 2015.
Zemliansky, Pavel. “Literacy Is Not Just Words Anymore.” Everything’s a Text. Eds. Dan Melzer and Deborah Coxwell-Teague. Boston: Rearson Education, Inc., 2011. 210-19.