My name is Archie Phillips, I study BA (Hons) Advertising at UAL: London College Communication and this is my UAL: myblog site. Here I will be regularly posting my work for my course.
The homepage acts as a live feed for all my work posted on this platform. If you are looking for anything specific will have its own allocated page e.g. Creative foundations 23/24.
At the start of this course we began Introduction to Advertising 23/24 where myself and a group of others came together to create and deliver a presentation on multi-channel advertising.
My role of the presentation was ‘brands and campaigns that have used multi-channel advertising’. I talked about how multi-channel advertising is evolving and how it has evolved both in a digital and physical aspect.
Archie Phillips Advertising and Concepts Report.
Topic: Representation of Women in beauty Products
Brand: Dove
The representation of women in beauty products is surrounded by a stigma where women feel underrepresented by the brands selling to them through advertising. Many brands promote unrealistic beauty standards, as well as ‘selling sex’ which generates a large contribution to this contemporary issue. There was a time in the early 2000’s when stomach rolls were only seen in before pictures, a plus size body was once considered a size six by popular media such as Americas next top model. Tabloids and paparazzi slammed celebrities for their appearances regularly which had an already negative impact before the presence of social media which would eventually inflate the issue on an even larger scale. ‘Selling sex’ a term used by advertisers also generates a large problem in itself and generates sales in two aspects. The first aspect being the aim to catch the male eye, an example would be placing a woman who is socially accepted as attractive next to a product like a perfume that is intended for women. The idea is that a man will see this and go and buy the product for his partner and/or a love interest for a special occasion such as birthday or Valentine’s Day for example. The other aspect is that the attractive women will catch the eye of a woman who may feel insecure about herself and have low self-esteem and the idea it creates is that the woman in the advert is attractive because she is wearing the product which would then essentially persuade the woman to purchase the product because she has been influenced to believe that if she purchases the product she will be as attractive as the woman in the advertisement.
In a report conducted by Dove’s public relations agency, Edleman in the early 2000’s it was found that only two percent of women would describe themselves as beautiful while twenty-three percent describe themselves as average. The report also showed that out of ten majorly populated countries fifty-four percent of women in the UK felt discomfort in describing themselves as beautiful which showed to be the highest of them all with forty-nine percent of women in Argentina coming second to that followed by Italy at forty-five percent. This report and many others are what made Dove successful. The report boasts PhD holders from both Harvard and the London School of economics it was incredibly well put together. They now knew their target demographic inside and out, allowing them to elicit an emotional response by addressing women’s relationships with themselves, the term beautiful and their deepest insecurities. The report clearly led Dove into a new era of its marketing techniques which paved way for the real beauty campaign and the other campaigns and projects that followed from that.
Dove’s real beauty campaign and pledge began in 2004, it aimed to change the representation of women in beauty products. The campaign still runs today alongside different projects such as the self-esteem project and many advertisements since. The advertising campaign began with different billboards featuring unedited natural women with options like “fat or fit” to question the audience of how they see perceive these women. It later progressed into online campaigns setting up a digital portal called the self-esteem project which compiled the advertisements as well as blogs promoting natural beauty. This resulted in a slew of viral videos such as “evolution” a 75 second Timelapse of an ordinary woman transforming into a model using makeup, hair stylists, airbrushing and photo shop ending on the statement “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted before going on to promote their self-esteem workshops. This campaign won the top award in the film category at the Cannes lion festival and the top digital award in the viral category. The campaign proved to be a huge commercial success seeing a ten percent increase in profits in 2010 alone. their advertisements are easily accessible on their website, stating a commitment to “no digital distortion”. The advert was so successful due to its connection to an issue within in its target demographic. It has been shown repeatedly that an emotional response leads to brand loyalty more than other forms of advertising, using a psychological influence to its advantage. Using their research on women’s self-esteem they used the issue to stand out from the forms of media that many women have been impacted by in their youth. Women felt celebrated the ad did not attempt to “leverage fear or shame” instead it stepped away from the airbrushed images so prevalent in the early 2000’s. Real beauty is now a commonly used hashtag and women everywhere are embracing naturality but in the early 2000’s the airbrushed model was the norm and dove was a pioneer in the body positivity and natural beauty movements.
For Dove to take the next step in the evolution of the representation of women in beauty products, Dove should consider stepping up above their own success by calling out other beauty brands even more than they already do by pressuring these brands to follow Dove’s footsteps to further evolve the industry and the representation of women to become more socially conscious. Furthermore, Dove could improve on two other main factors. The first factor is to expand upon its diversity by being intersectional and representing individuals with disabilities. The last factor is to include more individuals from southeast Asia that make up thirteen-point five percent of the UK population alone. They are featured less often than other minority groups like east Asians and black people and yet they face more stringent beauty standards than most. They receive both criticisms from their White British peers about a need to remove their thicker body hair but also standards from their own countries to have fair skin for example. Colourism is a very prevalent issue left behind in many previously colonised southeast Asian countries with skin lightening products flooding the shelves but is seldom addressed and they could benefit from a brand like dove embracing their natural features too.
References:
Dr. Nancy Etcoff – Harvard University Dr. Susie Orbach – London School of Econom. (September 2004). “THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT BEAUTY: A GLOBAL REPORT”. [Online]. Dove, a Unilever Beauty Brand. Available at: https://www.clubofamsterdam.com/contentarticles/52%20Beauty/dove_white_paper_final.pdf [Accessed 24 January 2024].
Effie Worldwide Inc. (2019). Dove 2003 – 2019, Global, Oglivy Edleman. [Online]. Effie. Available at: https://www.effie.org/caselibrary [Accessed 24 January 2024].
Global Brands Publications Limited © 2024. (2024). The Success of Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign. [Online]. Global Brands. Available at: https://www.globalbrandsmagazine.com/the-success-of-doves-real-beauty-campaign/ [Accessed 24 January 2024].
IMPACT. (2023). The Enduring Power and Impact of Dove’s ‘Real Beauty’ Campaign. [Online]. Strixus. Last Updated: 22 February 2023. Available at: https://strixus.com/entry/the-enduring-power-and-impact-of-doves-real-beauty-campaign-18095 [Accessed 24 January 2024].
Lorraine Griffin. (2023). Dove: A Spotless Approach to Digital Marketing. [Online]. Digital Marketing Institute. Last Updated: 4 December 2023. Available at: https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/dove-a-spotless-approach-to-digital-marketing [Accessed 24 January 2024].
Mark Sweney. (2007). Dove ad wins Cannes film prize. [Online]. The Guardian. Last Updated: Mon 25 Jun 2007. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2007/jun/25/advertising [Accessed 24 January 2024].
Marketing Week. (2019). Mark Ritson on how Dove challenged beauty industry stereotypes. [Online]. Youtube. Last Updated: 24 June 2019. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GirRXvVUR28&t=91s [Accessed 24 January 2024].
Michelle Konstantinovsky. (2022). If You Survived the Early 2000s Without Body Issues, Congratulations. [Online]. GLAMOUR. Last Updated: 29 September 2022. Available at: https://www.glamour.com/story/if-you-survived-the-early-2000s-without-body-issues-congratulations [Accessed 24 January 2024].
Nina Bahadur. (2016). Dove ‘Real Beauty’ Campaign Turns 10: How A Brand Tried To Change The Conversation About Female Beauty. [Online]. HUFFPOST. Last Updated: 6 December 2016. Available at: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dove-real-beauty-campaign-turns-10_n_4575940 [Accessed 24 January 2024].
Tatheer Tariq. (2021). Colorism in South Asian Culture and the Beauty Industry. [Online]. Spheres of Influence. Last Updated: November 30, 2021. Available at: https://spheresofinfluence.ca/colorism-in-south-asian-culture-and-the-beauty-industry/ [Accessed 24 January 2024].
Tim Piper. (2006). dove evolution. [Online]. Youtube. Last Updated: 6 Oct 2006. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYhCn0jf46U [Accessed 24 January 2024].
Unilever. (2024). Real Beauty Dove campaigns. [Online]. Dove. Available at: https://www.dove.com/uk/stories/campaigns.html [Accessed 24 January 2024].
For the last part of the project, this was where I wanted to do better from ‘Element One’ by going through everything required on the assignment PowerPoint and making sure it is in there. For this film I wanted to create something that was unrelated to the creative writing task but also showed in some way how I pictured the movie to be in the event if I ever made it. The text between images were done to represent the thoughts going through the head of the person watching her throughout and the black white is done to represent that this is a dark short film. I included many a lot of sounds that I created myself such as the noises of a shovel, a bus, and the music is copyright free and is used to further push a dark theme. Horrors and Thrillers are of my favourite genre of film, and I really enjoyed making one of my own.
For the audio part of ‘Element Two’ I wanted to take a moment to talk about why my passion for film is the exact reason why I do not study film. To me film is an escape and I do feel that if were to study it extensively, the magic of film would be taken away from me and all I want is to enjoy it. I also used this as a moment to share my experience of working in a cinema throughout the year of 2023 and what a crazy experience it was with big releases every week of every month. Towards the end I wanted to talk about the next part of the project that I would be working on which was my film/video task and include the Q&A criteria by asking my partner who was going to be in the film about her favourite movie and whether she was looking forward to being a part to play throughout audience of someone just speaking to them as well as music.
For the moodboard I wanted to show off my favourite films and Director with a geeky undertone as well as using colours that represented my love for more mature films with the aim to set a serious tone whilst also aiming to set a mood of excitement with the geeky undertone. What also helped set a serious tone was the clapperboard design as well as the font that I used because, to me the font represented the idea that I mainly enjoy serious and mature films. When bringing all these aspects together I do believe I have achieved my aims in setting a serious and geeky mood which is exactly what my taste in films are.
For the creative writing task, I was struggling with what I could do at first. However, I thought back to an old college project that I did for the first year of my level three diploma. The project was to design a poster and DVD cover for an idea that we had for a film. When I produced my idea, I thought about what it would be like if I could write it and what would happen, but I never did that until this piece of work. For my creative writing task, I decided that I would write the first 600 words for how this film would begin. The idea was inspired by previous work that I had done as well as the history of American Insane Asylums and inspired by the game ‘The Evil Within.’
This is the short film I created for element 1, the aim here was to give an insight on who I am outside of the course. As Vice-President of the UAL Film Society it’s obvious that I have a huge love for movies and it’s also my job!
This short film gives an insight to what it can be like at my part-time job and yes although this video is very silly I promise I did my job when creating this.
I got a lot of footage when putting this together that came to about 4-5 minutes however I managed to bring it down to just under 60 seconds and I think it came out well all things considering. I may put together 4-5 minute version to get better in my visual creation skills.
Created with Adobe Premiere Pro.
Link to music used:
Audio Production Script:
This is the audio task of element 1, I have attached the script I read from for this task. I have welcomed percipients to this blog as well as mentioning that there is more to come. I used this as an opportunity to also talk about my experience and where I have come from to get here.
The song in the background should be well-known to those who listen, it is a very popular song from one of my favourite bands (American Authors).
Created with Adobe Premiere Pro (Exported as MP3)
Link to music used:
