When Dove Cries: Art Department Errors or Racists Soap Makers?
I'm sure the late founder and inventor of Dove soap Vincent Lamberti, who passed away in 2014, a Bergen County organic soap maker and humanitarian, would be rolling over in his grave right now if he found out his famous soap Empire, Dove, eventually owned by Lever and now by the Unilever corporation, was being marketed and represented with negativity and racially derogative way to women of color. The campaign in question shows a still shot of an African American dark skinned woman taking off her T-Shirt with a bottle of liquid Dove body wash to her right and then another image pans to a White woman, suggesting that the soap cleans a dirty African woman to a cleaner White one. The image caused such an uproar today and even though Dove immediately apologized on Twitter with a response denying any intention to offend any woman, I still have to wonder as an marketing artist myself what really went wrong here! I have been an Art Director in advertising design for years, worked for many brand agencies' art departments and attended many "wall" meetings (concept board reviews). Mock concepts have to go through herds of visual approvals by various departments within the design agency's production flow, before its signed off by the Creative Director and the Client who gives the final OK---so it's hard to believe that NO ONE working on the Dove account saw anything controversially inappropriate with the campaign in question!
Here's a little secret I'll share with you---I can assure you this....we (the creatives), laughing, having fun, sarcastic, ego-riled, pushing the envelope on every out-of-the-box wild n"crazy pitch, know EXACTLY what we're doing and it's very easy to persuade to client into liking a 'great idea'. Hey, sometimes we just come up with straight-up BAD IDEAS, bad design too and it gets approved! Lol! We got away with a lot of 'itsh' and clients were submissive to the "guru' art directors that they worshipped and trusted. When you're a magnate brand, such as the Dove Corporation is, there are so many media campaign projects, ads, film, print media and now online media materials to be created for so many products launched monthly and annually. It's simply easier for the client to just "go with it' without really seeing the art's true meaning and its effect from the consumer's reaction both on the surface and well beneath the surface. In this case, it was all 'skin deep" and that wasn't deep enough!
On the the other hand, I later saw that the original ad campaign of this concept was actually video footage which displayed a completely different point of view for me and for many others. The footage showed 3 women taking off their T-shirts with bottles of body wash to their sides, first the Black woman and then the White and then an Asian-Indian looking woman! It seemed just fine to me and I questioned, would it have made any difference if the Asian-Indian woman was first and then the Black woman second?— Not really. To me, it showed the product was good for all three types of skin for WOMEN! So before you go judging someone's screen grab that goes viral with a derogative rumor behind it, check your facts fully and judge with your own eyes. In an already racially charged America, we are very sensitive to the race card being pulled against us, as we are a nation still suffering from politically upset and many are affected by it still. Me, I'm an objective person, I see it as it is. I see this from the point of view of a Marketing Creative, a Soap Maker as well as a woman of color, because that is who I am, ironically. I can assure you that many mistakes are made back in the art department that never get caught or corrected and product labels get printed hit the retail shelves anyway...this too Dove is guilty of...sigh. They apologized for that too, as another incident showed that they made a typo in the Summer Glow Skin Tanner lotion, giving it the description: "For Normal to Dark Skin", suggesting dark skin was not normal. Clearly a typo, it probably should have read "For Medium to Dark Skin". Hey Dove, I think its time to hire some real seasoned art directing creatives with attention to detail and does spell checks—check out my resume!
