BrainStorm

In a transparent world of checks and balances (read: be authentic or someone, somewhere on the blog-o-sphere will catch you in the act) it is fascinating to me how corporate marketing efforts can backfire. The most recent stink involves Dove’s so called viral video “Onslaught” campaign. (As a side note - I don’t think a professionally produced, PR pushed, heavily marketed video by an ad agency should ever be called “Viral”). The campaign itself is admirable in the sense that it encourages young women to not be influenced by the unrealistic and often degrading depictions of women in most beauty advertising. This is part of the Dove Self-Esteem Fund campaign.

However admirable this effort is, it didn’t take too long for the citizen journalists to point out that Dove’s parent company, Unilever, is one of the worst offenders through its blatant sex-driven AXE bodyspray campaigns. (See the video response here).

The lesson for us marketers and social media PR professionals is to either do your homework to make sure you don’t come off as hypocritical or don’t use social media to get your “political” message out. In almost every case - corporations’ attempts at trying to preach to their audience is laughable at best and completely disingenuous at worst. My thoughts - sell Dove on its merits as a skin cleanser - its a great product…keep it at that. And the AXE ads obviously work on young men - pretty much every guy I know uses AXE or has used it before. If you are considering going “viral” with your message you may want to avoid politically charged and self-righteous campaigns. They just may come back to bite you in the ad.

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This entry was posted on Monday, November 26th, 2007 at 1:19 pm and is filed under Youth Marketing, Video, Buzz Marketing, Social 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.