The Dove Campaign For True Beauty: Can you airbrush authenticity?

     Ad campaigns are famous for airbrushing their subject to make it so appealing, nothing could be wrong with it. But what if the very idea you are selling is feeling good about you really are? How do you airbrush authenticity? The Dove Campaign for True Beauty did just that, launching an enormously popular campaign showing normal people feeling good about their real body. But did the Dove Campaign really make their point, or did they contradict it? One ad in particular, targeting self-esteem in young girls, was very controversial.

     In the ad, a series of cute little girls as well as a few teens were portrayed looking sadly into the camera, as phrases such as “Hates her freckles” or “Thinks she’s fat” floated underneath them. A children choir version of the pop song “True Colors” played throughout the ad, quietly at first as the depressed girls gave the death stare, and then pulling into a huge crescendo as the kids suddenly turn happy about their bodies, presumably through Dove’s influence. All of these strategies are enormous additions to pathos for the ad. It forces us to either feel pity for the little girls and then happy for them, or for us to remember a time when we didn’t feel good about ourselves and then wish the transformation would have happened for us. The screen reads “Because every girl deserves to feel good about themselves”. The little girls laugh and dance ballet to the blaring “True Colors”, a golden light tingeing the room as it hadn’t before.  At the end, the song winds up to a clean white screen sporting the Dove Campaign logo and the clear thesis of the ad. “Help us,” It says, in a dewy blue font. Then it gives their information and closes with the end of the song, leaving the audience to draw their own logical conclusions.

     The ad is a fantastic example of using pathos to make a point. Everything from the inspirational song to the harsh statements under their sad faces makes the audience feel sorry for these poor and really adorable children. The ad’s use of cold blacks, stark tans, and navy blues in the background of the beginning sequences enhances the pathos by injecting a gloomy, judgemental feel to each of the girl’s situations. In the same way, the gold lighting and soothing blues and greens used in the end as their smiling and looking happy add to the pathos by making the audience feel as if that is the life we want for those kids. The audience knows that they should live in that pretty, bright world.

     However, I feel that the ad does not show very much logos. By the end of the ad, they say nothing about just what the Dove Campaign proposes to do to create self-esteem in cute girls with your money. All it basically says is give us money, so we can do a whole lot of generic statements like “deserves to see how beautiful she really is”. They rely so heavily on pathos that there is either no time for giving any factual information but their website, or they are trying to get donations no matter what and think their audience is dumb enough to not look further in\\\to it.

     Ethos is also lacking in the ad. While the very intent of Dove is to promote a healthy self-esteem about your true beauty (or true colors in this case), an article published on May 12, in the New Yorker, by Lauren Collins, suggested otherwise. The author was interviewing the famous photo retoucher Pascal Dangin. As he was criticizing hypocrisy in the advertisement business, the author mentioned the Dove Campaign and challenged him with Dove's thesis about true beauty. But shockingly, Dangin told her that he had been hired to retouch each of their photo shoots. “Do you know how much retouching was on that?” he asked. Apparently we did not. “But it was great to do, a challenge, to keep everyone’s skin and faces showing the mileage but not looking unattractive.” That quote greatly compromises the ethos of Dove. If you are promoting a healthy body image, then why would you touch up every model you use?  

      The Dove Campaign for True Beauty did not make their point with these ads. They did not convince their audience that they could improve people's body-image. In fact, they did quite the opposite. The irony is blaring: They hired Pascal Dangin to airbrush all the supposedly 'truly beautiful' kids that they had apparently helped so much. People eye earning their livelihoods off of teaching people to love their bodies, and then not respecting their own model's enough to leave their look alone. So much for true beauty. In that same article, Dangin was quoted saying this: “The people who complain about retouching are the first to say, ‘Get this thing off my arm.’ ” I rather think that that sums the mistake Dove made up.

      Hypocrisy aside, the ad displayed very strong appeals to pathos. It employed most of the strategies out there to make the audience connect emotionally to the little girls and want the best for them. Realistically, in a fifty second ad targeted at a mainstream audience, pathos is what will leave the most lasting impression anyway. Although logos was barely represented at the end with “Help us”, a detailed plan for improvement has no place in a quick bite like that. However, I find the lack of ethos shown by hiring Pascal Dangin to be devastating to their overall message. The fact that they did not hold true to the ideals of true beauty that they themselves created decreases dramatically from their side of the discussion. They have proven that you cannot airbrush authenticity.