Unilever’s Dove soap became a brand with purpose when it launched the “Campaign for Real Beauty” to combat media-driven stereotypes of female beauty. But now Dove is facing criticism about its other brands that contradict the Dove campaign, and struggling to determine the best allocation of funds between advertising and the educational programs that deliver social impact. Can Dove maintain both its market position and social impact in the future?
Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer, Mark Kramer discusses his case, “Dove and Real Beauty: Building a Brand with Purpose.”
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BRIAN KENNY: Molly Wolfe Hungerford, who hailed from County Cork, Ireland published romantic novels under the pen name The Duchess in the late 1800s. Her works were characterized as entertaining and charming, though not of great depth. But one phrase from her most popular book has stood the test of time. “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” Such a simple concept, but hard to accept when the global beauty industry is spending $14.4 billion a year, showing us what beauty should look like and telling us how to achieve it. Can consumers really trust that a beauty brand has their best interest at heart?
Today on Cold Call we’ll hold a mirror up to purpose-driven brands with Mark Kramer’s case entitled, Dove and Real Beauty: Building a Brand with Purpose. I’m your host, Brian Kenny, and you’re listening to Cold Call on the HBR Presents network.
Mark Kramer is a leading researcher, writer, and lecturer on strategies for social impact. He also co-founded FSG, a social impact consultancy that operates globally. Hey, Mark. Thanks for joining us today. This is your second spin on Cold Call, so we’re glad to have you back.
MARK KRAMER: Absolutely, Brian. Delighted to be here.
BRIAN KENNY: And everybody knows who Dove is. I’m going to ask you to start by telling us what your cold call would be when you teach this in the classroom, how would you start it out?
MARK KRAMER: Well, there’s actually an exercise I ask students to do about allocating their marketing budget. Because one of the interesting challenges is that what Dove is spending to actually influence young boys and girls to have a more positive body image all around the world is reaching a target audience of 11 to 14-year-olds. But their customer segment is actually 18 to 30-year-olds. And so there’s a dilemma that the marketing managers face as to how much of their budget should be spent on just traditional product promotion, how much should be spent on general publicity about the issue of beauty and women’s self-esteem, and how much should be spent on the actual programs that reach more than 35 million people around the world to actually influence their own thinking? And so I ask students to figure out how they’re going to allocate their budget among these three different activities.
BRIAN KENNY: Very interesting. Let me ask you why you decided to write this case. Actually, there’s another case in the collection that I found when I was reading this one that focuses a little bit on the early years of Dove’s corporate social responsibility approach here, but yours goes much deeper into where they are and it brings us right up to date. How does this relate to the kinds of things that you think about as a scholar and a teacher?
MARK KRAMER: Well, I teach a course on purpose and profit, really thinking about how companies can embed a social purpose into their core strategy in ways that will make a difference, both in terms of social impact and in terms of business benefit. And one of the great things about this case is we really have solid evidence about the reach and impact of Dove’s campaign on the attitudes and self-image of young people around the world, as well as actual evidence about the impact on the sales and the return on advertising spend for Dove. So you can see a very clear, measurable social impact and a very clear, measurable business impact. But I think it goes beyond that as well. First, a lot of people think about this issue of beauty as being less important than perhaps other social issues out there, climate change and so on. And one of the other interesting things about the case is the research that shows that limitations around self-image create tremendous obstacles for people in their lives. That women will not show up for a job interview, will miss a day of work, may not go to a doctor’s appointment, that young girls and boys may not participate in athletic activities, people may not show up to vote, all because they feel bad about their appearance. And of course the beauty industry is presenting us with images that have been tremendously retouched, such that no actual living human being can achieve that level of beauty. And yet we’re inundated with this consistent set of images that none of us actually come close to, and we feel bad because we don’t.
BRIAN KENNY: I think the situation in terms of the way this affects young people, women in particular, has really been exacerbated by social media.
MARK KRAMER: Yes, absolutely. One of the interesting parts about it is the reference to the public health pyramid. Because when you’re trying to reach people around an issue, you have a choice of going broad or going deep. And what the public health pyramid suggests is that you need to do both things, that there need to be programs that are intensive, programs that actually do change people’s attitudes and behavior, and that may need to be managed by a teacher or a trained facilitator. And at the same time, if you want to reach millions and millions of young boys and girls, you need to find ways to do it through social media, through television shows, through advertising, other things that have a lighter touch but reach a broader base. And so, one of the interesting things here is that Dove really developed a comprehensive public health approach that includes both the broad reach and the intensive engagement. And of course, they have the resources to do this in a way that most nonprofit organizations do not. And so it’s a really powerful example of how a company can, frankly, improve on efforts to achieve social impact over what the nonprofits and NGO community can do.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. That’s a great segue into my next question, which is just, if we pull the lens back a little bit, where does Dove sit in the personal care industry? It’s a huge industry.
MARK KRAMER: It’s a huge industry. And Dove has become, partly because of this campaign, Unilever’s single largest brand. But of course, one of the things that makes this campaign possible is that Dove soap, which is a moisturizing soap, is really about what is healthy for your skin, as opposed to a cosmetics company or a company that is more focused on actually changing your physical appearance. And so there’s a way in which Dove could embark on this Campaign for Real Beauty and tie it to their products in a way that other beauty industry cosmetics companies could not really legitimately do.
BRIAN KENNY: And that’s always been core to their brand. If you could look back at that classic advertising, that’s always been part of their message.
MARK KRAMER: One of the interesting things I discovered in doing the case is that Dove soap is actually not soap. It has a different chemical composition that was developed in World War II as a way of cleaning burns and wounds more gently. And so it actually is a different product. And their advertising has always been fact-based, asking consumers to test the soap against competing soaps, to use a pH strip to measure the pH, or to actually wash one half of their face with Dove and the other half with some other soap. So there’s a reality base to their positioning, which, again, is part of what has made this approach to their advertising consistent with the brand, consistent with the strategy.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. And we use the term purpose-driven brand. I don’t want to assume that our listeners know what that means. So from you, you study these all the time. How would you describe what a purpose-driven brand is?
MARK KRAMER: Well, I think it is a brand that has taken a social purpose or social impact goal as core to its positioning, and is actually doing things that have a measurable impact on that issue, and doing it in a way that is also differentiating their product from others, contributing to the brand identity, and driving sales. So it’s a great example of what Professor Porter and I refer to as, “creating shared value,” companies that have found a way to really bring social impact and business benefit together to create a lasting, sustainable competitive advantage.
BRIAN KENNY: And we’ve talked about a lot of purpose-driven brands on the show in the past, and it really seems like this is not about altruism. I mean, that seems to be a really good side benefit of this, but brands wouldn’t do this if it didn’t somehow tie back to their business in a positive way. Is that safe to say?
MARK KRAMER: Absolutely. And of course, altruism is great, and companies contribute philanthropy and that’s a wonderful thing, but the average large company in the US contributes about three-quarters of 1% of their profit to philanthropy. So it’s a very limited pot of money. Whereas when you’re doing something that is actually driving revenue in sales, you can spend vastly more money. And it’s not just the advertising reach, but it’s the ability to do serious research to understand how to impact and influence the issue. And so that’s why we think that purpose-driven brands where the expenditure is actually driving revenue is actually much more powerful than philanthropy.
BRIAN KENNY: Let’s talk a little bit about how this has evolved over the years at Dove. It’s sustained over time through different leaders. Why do you think that is? How are they able to keep the focus on this, and at the same drive the revenues that they needed to drive to make the business work?
MARK KRAMER: Yeah. I think that’s one of the fascinating things about this case. And it’s very clear in the case stated by Steve Miles, the guy who’s responsible for the brand, that in order to make this part of the company, they had to do four things. First, they had to have buy-in from the CEO. And of course, Paul Polman is famously recognized for his focus on sustainable living. And he picked up on this issue and encouraged Dove to pursue this path.
BRIAN KENNY: Now he’s the CEO of Unilever, is that right?
MARK KRAMER: He was the CEO Of Unilever. He stepped down about a year or two ago, but his tradition is being continued by Alan Jope, who’s the current CEO. Secondly, there has to be a culture within the company that really appreciates the issue. And so Dove has a day every year where thousands of employees go out to schools and actually facilitate one of the training programs about body image. And it enables employees to have a direct personal experience about the value of this program. And then equally important is proof of the social impact and proof of the business benefit. And so they have done studies that have determined, what is the return on investment for the advertising expenditures? It turns out to be four times higher for their purpose-driven advertising than for their product-driven advertising. They look at the impact of intent to purchase on the part of consumers who are aware of their program, and it is anywhere between a 10 to 25% increase in intent to purchase, which is absolutely huge. So they have rigorous evidence of the business benefit of this, but then they have also worked with Harvard and the London School of Economics and London School of Hygiene to do rigorous randomized control trials by these third parties, to demonstrate that these programs are actually evidence-based and actually do change young girls’ and boys’ perceptions of beauty and of their own body image. And so it’s these combination of factors, the CEO’s support, engaging the culture of the company and employees widely in this campaign, but also demonstrating that you are achieving results on both the business and social impact side that is really what has kept this program in place for nearly two decades at this point.
BRIAN KENNY: It’s really interesting because the case refers to some of the approaches that they’ve taken to introduce these concepts to the world. And there’ve been some pretty famous videos that they’ve launched. Can you talk a little bit about how they’re bringing these ideas to people on a broad scale?
MARK KRAMER: One of the nice things about the case is that Dove has given us permission to link to the videos so that you can actually see them firsthand. And I have to say, some of these videos actually bring tears to my eyes. They’re famous for the Evolution ad, which is just a simple 75-second ad that actually shows how a normal woman’s face is transformed through makeup and styling, but also through digital retouching to the kind of image we actually see on a billboard or on television. And it makes so clear the fact that this is not a form of beauty that is humanly achievable. And it cost $150,000 to create that ad. They believe they’ve generated $150 million worth of advertising revenue from hundreds of millions of people viewing this ad. The one that I find even more touching is the Sketches ad, where they have a forensic artist from the police force set up to sketch women’s faces. And the artist can’t see the woman, but he asks the woman to describe her face, and he sketches it. And then the woman goes off and meets with another person and just spends a little time chatting with them. And then the artist asks that second person to describe the first woman’s face. And what happens is that that stranger’s description of the face is much more beautiful than the woman’s description of her own face. And then they put up the two sketches and let the woman come back and see the difference. And again, it brings tears to my eyes to see people recognize how they have internalized a sense of unattractiveness that is not what the world sees.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. It’s very powerful. And the case goes into some of the numbers. I forget what the exact statistics are, but women’s self-image is super low, pretty much everywhere in the world.
MARK KRAMER: It is. And one of the challenges of the case is, the reasons why it’s low and how to influence it are culturally dependent. And so the programs that have worked in the US and Western Europe don’t work in China, don’t work in India, don’t work in Africa, and yet these are important emerging markets for the brand. And so the brand has really had to do pretty intensive research to understand how to make their programs relevant in different parts of the world.
BRIAN KENNY: I guess one of the questions I have is, there are some tensions that the case reveals, and the Dove brand is one of Unilever’s brands, but they also have the Axe brand. They have brands that represent the complete counter to what natural, real beauty should be all about. And they reinforce all the stereotypes that we’re seeing from other beauty companies about what beauty should look like.
MARK KRAMER: That’s right. And that always leads to a terrific student discussion about how to manage this conflict. And one of the things we talk about in our course is this idea of whether companies are good or evil, or whether they are net positive. And there are a lot of non-profits or NGOs out there that want to try and evaluate whether a company is good or bad. We actually think that’s naive, that any large company is probably doing some good things somewhere in the world and some bad things somewhere else. And when Porter and I talk about this idea of creating shared value, we focus in on what every company can do to actually create positive impact somewhere, somehow in its set of activities and products or services. And we don’t try and pronounce whether a company is a saint or a devil. And so this forces students to think about, given the undeniable positive impact that Dove is having, how do you think about Unilever more broadly given that they also do have these products that take a very different view of beauty?
BRIAN KENNY: We live in the age of millennials and Gen Z. We know that people in these generations care a lot about the organizations they work for, and they want to work for someplace that they can feel good about. How does this help Dove in terms of attracting new talent? Have they seen it reap dividends in that area as well?
MARK KRAMER: They have. And I know that from conversations with the folks we interviewed at Dove. I’m not sure to be honest, that that is a dimension that comes through as strongly in the case as perhaps it should. And I have to admit, I sometimes am a little bit skeptical about that. There’s no question people would like to work for a company that they feel good about. On the other hand, there are a lot of different motivations that go into taking a job.
BRIAN KENNY: So how do they balance then, I guess, between investing in the mission, because it’s a really important part of their brand, but also driving the sale of products? You mentioned earlier that product managers have to make these hard choices. What does that look like? Where do they come down on that?
MARK KRAMER: Well, it does vary from market to market, and while they are taking a more centralized role and have recently decided that every market has to spend at least 50% of its expenditure on the mission-related advertising and programs. Actually, during most of the time that’s covered by the case, the average market only spent 5% of their revenue on these programs. And there is evidence in the case from some studies that the more that regional managers spend on the mission-related advertising and programs, the better the product sales do. On the other hand, there was one point where they went entirely with mission-driven, and the product sales began to lag. And so there is this, again, interesting tension within the case, about how much do you spend on social impact, how much do you spend bragging about the social impact you have so people are aware of it, and how much do you spend on just traditional advertising to make people go buy the product? And there isn’t a single correct answer, but it is a tension that runs throughout the case.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. I think that’s interesting too, because the cynics who are listening might say, “Oh, come on. I mean, do they really believe this stuff? Isn’t this just another form of marketing for Dove to sell soap and beauty products?”
MARK KRAMER: What’s really interesting about Dove here is they really have developed these intensive programs with the World Association of Girl Guides and Scouts, and with universities that actually reach tens of millions of young people around the world, and actually do influence their self-image. And so their spending on these programs is not just advertising dollars, not just money going to charity, but is actually delivering real impact in a way that the nonprofit sector really couldn’t afford to do.
BRIAN KENNY: I thought it was interesting, the whole aspect of them moving from saying to doing, and that’s something we talk about at Harvard Business School a lot. And that was behind the introduction of The FIELD Method a few years ago, was that we knew that the case method in the classroom was doing a great job of inculcating ideas and theories, but we needed to get students to a place where they actually had to act on those ideas. And it sounds like Dove has taken that to the next step too, to keep invigorating this campaign.
MARK KRAMER: Absolutely. They talk very clearly about this balance of brand say and brand do. And again, part of what’s interesting is most of the brand do, these actual programs that reach young people around the world, most of their customers are not aware of it. There’s a data point in the case that only about 28% of consumers are aware of the brand do. And yet they need the brand do to give integrity to the brand say, and they wouldn’t be able to partner with nonprofit organizations. And they actually receive grant funding from UNICEF and Gavi and other organizations to extend their work. They wouldn’t be able to do that if they didn’t have the actual brand do on the ground.
BRIAN KENNY: So how would you define this in terms of the culture of the organization, how much a part of the culture of the organization is the Real Beauty campaign? Has it become just part of their DNA at this point?
MARK KRAMER: It has absolutely become part of their DNA. But one of the interesting challenges when you’re trying to solve a social problem as part of your marketing or business model, is that if you actually succeed, you undercut your own differentiation. So there’s been a real shift over the last 15 years in advertisers beginning to use real women rather than actresses and models in a greater awareness of the challenges of this artificial sense of beauty and its consequences for public health and for people’s lives. And so as they have actually become more successful in putting this issue on the global agenda, they have lost some of their differentiation. And so one of the questions the case raises is, should they continue with this campaign or do they need to move on to something else? When is it no longer differentiating their marketing, even if they’re continuing to have a positive impact?
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. Really interesting question, and not an easy solution at all I would think, once you’ve got so much invested in this particular purpose-driven approach.
MARK KRAMER: Absolutely.
BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. This has been a fabulous conversation. I have one more question for you before we let you go, Mark. And that is, for those people who are out there listening, maybe they work at organizations where they’re already purpose-driven, or maybe they want to bring some purpose to their organization, what’s one thing that you’d like them to take away from this case?
MARK KRAMER: Well, the one thing I’d like them to take away from this case is it’s about having actual impact in a way that creates both social and business benefit. It’s not about posturing, it’s not about philanthropy. It’s about actually achieving both business and social impact and holding yourself accountable on both of those dimensions.
BRIAN KENNY: That’s great. Mark Kramer, thank you so much for joining us today.
MARK KRAMER: Brian, thank you. A pleasure to be here.
BRIAN KENNY: If you enjoy Cold Call, you might like other podcasts on the HBR Presents Network. Whether you’re looking for advice on navigating your career, you want the latest thinking in business and management, or you just want to hear what’s on the minds of Harvard Business School professors, the HBR Presents Network has a podcast for you. Find them on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen. I’m your host, Brian Kenny, and you’ve been listening to Cold Call, an official podcast of Harvard Business School on the HBR Presents Network.