A Short Film For Dove: Dove Real Beauty Sketches
How & Why Dove made a viral documentary about women’s self image
There are a few formulas often used by personal care brands when it comes to advertising their products, whether they sell lotion, makeup, or shampoo.
One technique focuses on an ambassador. In these commercials, we see an ambassador, usually an actress or relatively well-known model using the product. The ad follows the ambassador talking to the viewer and/or going about their day. The individual at the center of the ad is often someone who is associated with beauty and as such the commercial hints at the idea that to be more like the ambassador and to be as beautiful as the ambassador one must use the product the ambassador uses.
Another technique focuses on pointing out flaws and then stating that their product can fix it. These ads are often a bit more abstract and show improvement right before your eyes using special effects. These ads are usually more focused on showing you what they want you to think the people who use the product look like (despite the fact that the people within the ad likely do not use the product).
Other ads are more fact-focused using data, people in lab coats, and animations to communicate why their product is the one you need to solve your problems. These ads are logos based not really aiming to influence you emotionally but to present a logical solution to a problem you already believe you have.
These ads with their artificial lighting, scripted dialogue, and posing models can at times feel cold and unrelatable to the average viewer. Dove went a different route breaking away from the formula and experimenting with the documentary, Real Beauty Sketches. Directed by John X. Carey, Real Beauty Sketches, by breaking away from convention, finds a way to make their brand feel relatable and associates their brand with positive and warm emotions in a market where ads can feel negative and cold.
The film begins with an introduction to an FBI trained police sketch artist, Gil Zamora sitting in a large room. Various women enter the room and begin to describe how they view themselves to the police sketch artist as they sit behind a curtain. Next, we see strangers describing the features of the women to the same sketch artist. The women are later brought back to the room where the sketches based on their own description are placed next to sketches based on stranger’s descriptions. We see a montage of women looking at and reacting to their portraits. The film ends with a white screen reading, “you are more beautiful than you think”.
Real Beauty Sketches first challenges the traditional trends of personal care ads through its aesthetic. It’s cinematography, shot by Ed David, uses solely natural daylight in contrast with other ads with use primarily artificial light. The camera’s movement is also different from the typical personal care ad. The cinematography involves a few dolly shots but it primarily relies on handheld shots. This gives the film a more natural feeling, almost as if the viewer is watching in person. Other personal care ads often use flatter, more regulated camera movements like pans and tilts, if the camera moves at all. Real Beauty Sketches also uses a wide range of shots . Close up shots are used frequently connecting the viewer with the interviewee by literally bringing the viewer closer and wide shots are used to establish the setting. Personal care ads often use only one type of shot primarily, with most of the shots being medium shots with close-ups every once in a while or almost entirely close-ups.
The setting of the film also plays a part. Beauty ads often take place in poorly established seemingly infinite rooms. Real Beauty Sketches does the reverse of this quickly establishing the environment and making it feel tangible. This makes the film feel much more grounded than traditional personal care ads. Their choice of environment is a welcoming studio space with floor to ceiling windows. It’s bright, open, and inviting space for the viewer.
Real Beauty Sketches also diverges through its choice of “ambassadors”. It does not select use celebrities or models who have been digitally touched up. The film puts their target audience in the film, flaws and all. With ads for personal care products, its structure is often built around using their models and ambassadors to craft an aspiration. Sometimes it’s simply an aspiration of simply an aesthetic. Other times it’s an aspiration to be like a celebrity. Real Beauty Sketches presents the aspiration of being the best version of yourself. And this is what flips the script. Often at the core of beauty ads is something that is essentially negative. They point out a flaw and present their product as a solution. Real beauty Sketches does the opposite, seeming to say that the flaws don’t exist; that women are in fact more beautiful than they think.
At the time of its release it was the most viewed online ad of all time. The film was viewed more than 114 million views and won various advertising awards. It went viral, being shared widely across social media. It connected with its audience and the unique message of the film in a crowded and formulaic market is the cause.
The film is able to connect with its audience because it seemingly appeals to something many women experience. It manages to connect with women of all backgrounds who have struggled with self-esteem and self-criticism in regards to how they look.
The film delivers its message nearly perfectly, its single flaw being that the film still somewhat defines a set of visual features which define beauty. By saying the drawings on the left are less beautiful than the drawings on the right the implication is made that the differentiating features of the drawings on the left are less beautiful features. The film attempts to re-frame this with the interaction towards the film’s conclusion where the drawing on the left is described as “closed off and…sadder” and the drawing on the right is described as “more open… friendly and happy”. Including these parts of their conversation helps to focus the film’s message. There is more of this included in the longer cut of the film, though the contradiction of defining aesthetic beauty is still present. This contradiction within the film was in part the cause of much of the controversy surrounding the film at its release.
Dove has been working on a campaign focused on the topics of beauty, confidence, and self-image in women for several years. They have done several short documentaries in which, like this one, they examine beauty in relation to self-esteem and self-perception. They usually involve Dove getting “real women” to talk about how they view themselves. With how long Dove has been doing this campaign (in different forms since 2004) clearly Dove has found it to be effective.
The film never once shows a Dove product. The logo isn’t even seen until the final moments of the film. This is because the film is not meant to sell a product as much as it’s meant to sell their brand. This is particularly beneficial for a company selling soaps, lotions, shampoos, and antiperspirant. It is particularly difficult to make these products stand out in ads. A restaurant can combine a unique assortment of ingredients and film it in a way that makes your mouth water more than another company’s. A car or clothing commercial can attract your attention over another simply with the aesthetic of their product.
With personal care products, the aesthetic of the products does not matter at all next to the effectiveness of their products. And it is extremely difficult to sell the effectiveness of personal care products via commercials because every company presents their product as the best solution in the same way. They show a model with great skin or an actress with great hair. The audience has no metric by which they can measure who has better hair or better skin, especially after the digital touch-ups prominent in advertising are added.
So rather than try to face this problem Dove circumvents it completely.Instead they primarily focus on selling their brand. They present themselves as a brand that supports women and is a moral leader. And even though this is not really connected to the product they are selling, it works. Because people don’t necessarily buy the best product. They buy the product makes them feel the best.
