Start a Movement!

As I washed my hair this morning with the samples of Dove shampoo and conditioner I got in my gift bag at the Ladies Who Launch event last weekend (a pink-fest), I was reminded of Dove’s new flick Onslaught which has been circulating on the web and has already been featured on Good Morning America.

Clearly, the big heads at Ogilvy & Mather must have read Chapter 3 (page 62) of my not yet released book Step Into The Spotlight! where I suggest that businesses start a movement. Soap is just soap. To sell it, Dove chose to launch “The Campaign for Real Beauty”.

The key to this succeeding is to make it appear that you are spearheading this movement without really sticking your neck out. How? You gotta pick something, an ideology that already has a lot of support or else you’re spending your time & energy trying to change people’s minds, rarely a fruitful attempt.

This trick is to pick something that people already want/think/believe, something they’re already complaining about, and then position yourself as being at the forefront of this movement. If you’re speedy enough to be first out of the gate to attach your name to something and you’re good at execution (the Dove film is provocative) it may work. If you stick your neck out too far, (Benetton’s convicted killer ad comes to mind, just one in a controversial body of work),you may experience a backlash but that also may be a publicity coup according to some. (Advertising great, David Ogilvy said “There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.” I don’t agree. Haven’t seen PeeWee Herman around much lately…)

What Dove said, it had to be said. As a mother of many many teenage girls, (Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. “So young, so glamorous, and she’s got kids too?” I get that alot…) I applaud Dove for saying it. Almost makes me forget that Unilver, the company that makes Dove, also sells Slim-Fast with women in bikinis…