February 27, 2012

Unilever to save the day!

We have talked a bit about how much money can be made by making us feel insecure about our bodies (and minds!). We are made to feel so afraid of being "deviant" that this tactic works--if we were not so afraid of difference, we would not be so willing to spend to make ourselves "normal." Even the most informed consumers are left feeling doubt, when we have a constant barrage of messages telling us we are not measuring up to the ideals.

Unilever came up in class a couple of times, and I thought a few of you would appreciate this.

This is a clip from Steven Colbert's show, The Colbert Report. Here he discusses how Unilever socially constructs the problem of "unattractive armpits" and offers us a Dove product to save the day.


Dove (owned by Unilever) is a really interesting case. As was also pointed out in class, they were among the first companies to jump on the bandwagon when there was a public outcry against Photoshopping. The following commercial was beloved, and spread around like wildfire--they wanted women to believe they were on our side. And instead of making us feel bad about ourselves, they were going to save the day....by selling us their product. Was that progress, or more of the same clever marketing?



Don't forget, Unilever owns more than just Dove. They also own Axe (Lynx in some parts of the world), which has often been called out for their blatant objectification and hypersexualization of women, in their advertising.

Here is a great podcast I found a couple of years ago, that really talks about this new type of marketing--selling us female empowerment as a product, with profits still the ultimate goal.

Here are a couple other perspectives, and critiques of these, and similar, marketing ploys.



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