“wear what you want!” by using our products: Dove’s branding evolution (pt. 2)

Okay, it’s #RealDadMoments time. A lot of scholarly works I came across when writing this paper in 2019 focused on women and commodity feminism. But what about men? Dove has a special product line for men, Dove Men+Care (which, if you think about it, are really the same products but designed in a “manly-man” way). One of their advertisements has amassed 13.6 million views, is not just for men, but for dads. Although Dove targets a lot of their products toward women, they spread their wings in 2014 and started addressing commercials towards men.

                                           

This ad’s goal is to show men being loving fathers who are there for their children because Dove believes “it’s time to acknowledge the caring moments of fatherhood that often go overlooked.”[1] And Dove has a point. A lot of ads featuring dads show them as people “who incompetently diaper their babies and regularly burn meals,”[2] but these images are getting old and new images must be created to fit a changing society in which masculinity, particularly toxic masculinity, is being put into question and challenged. As Humphreys writes, “cleaning and parenting have most consistently been framed by advertisers as female activities,” and this Dove commercial challenges this.

It shows fathers doing what some might consider more “maternal” jobs. They are brushing hair, showing affection, comforting, and putting sunscreen on their children’s faces. These images are also combined with more “traditional” masculine roles however, emphasizing the strength they have. The “dad’s emotional connection to his children…demand his brute strength in order to balance the active definition of masculinity still present in popular culture,” writes Humphreys.  This is seen in this ad with fathers catching their children, saving them from the monkey bars, helping with car issues, and swinging their children around. These fathers might be placed in a “feminine” realm, but the hypermasculine stereotypes are still present.

Dove seems to struggle with challenging stereotypes while simultaneously supporting them. Their goal seems to be to show dads as being able to do more than their usual strength-related tasks, but they still include footage of them doing these things. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing – looking at my own childhood, my father swung me around too – but it is interesting to note that sometimes companies can’t commit to a full refusal of stereotyping. What does work for Dove, in this commercial’s case, is that they show a diverse range of dads illustrating the fact that dads are unique. Their call to celebrate dads is their form of branded activism through the lens of authenticity: be an authentic dad.

Through the creation of an “authentic” consumer, advertisers “enabled the subsequent forging of a relationship between consumer and producer.”[3] What does this mean? Well, in Dove’s case, they are attempting to create a relationship between themselves and their consumers by saying they want to celebrate dads, something not previously done in the media (as they claim). Dove wants to brand themselves as a company that cares about dads – “real dads” – thus using authenticity as their method of becoming branded activists.

Phew, okay, lots of fun language in that paragraph. Tl;dr? Authenticity is the sense of realness. It’s legitimacy and genuineness. When a company wants to also emulate that sense of genuineness, they try to use signs and symbols that make them seem authentic. So, for Dove, that means showing images of dads being real dads (and in fact, from what I recall, some of the dads and kids are really related).

And the point about branded activism: Dove is taking a stance on feminism. Feminism is a big movement and it includes fighting against the toxic masculinity norms. Being a loving father is part of that and Dove knows this. They are trying to battle the (mis)representation of men as fathers in the media by placing them in a world where they are celebrated for all that they do, or rather, the positive things they can do.

This is where Douglas Holt’s “identity myth” comes into play. The identity myth means that “the audience comes to perceive that the myth resides in the product…so as customers…wear the product, they experience a bit of the myth.”[4] This means that fathers should use Dove because, in doing so, they will be taking part in the #RealDadMoments movement and supporting the “proper” portrayal of fathers on TV which reiterates what branded activism requires: taking part in the brand means being an activist for fathers. And they continue to do this on their YouTube page where their ads focus on “real” men and fathers.

If you’re wondering why I often put real in quotation marks, it’s because I take issue with Dove labelling their movement like this. Yes, media portrayals of fathers can often be far from the truth or based in hypermasculine stereotypes. However, what does “real” even mean? And why does Dove feel like they have the right to label what is real and what isn’t? Don’t get me wrong, I am all for involved fathers (and parents in general, let’s not assume mothers are inherently more involved, that’s another topic for another time). BUT! Real is what you want it to be, not what a company wants it to be.

I have one more part to go! It’s about Dove’s “Girl Collective” campaign. Keep an eye out for it!

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[1] Dove, 2014. (Taken from YouTube description)

[2] Humphreys, 2016. Ads and dads: TV commercials and contemporary attitudes toward fatherhood. In E. Podnieks (eds.), Pops in pop culture: Fatherhood, masculinity, and the new man (pp. 107-124). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.  

[3] Banet-Weiser, 2012. Branding consumer citizens: Gender and the emergence of brand culture. Authentic™: The politics of ambivalence in a brand culture (pp.15-49). New York: NYU Press, pp. 15-49.

[4] Holt, 2005. How societies desire brands: Using cultural theory to explain brand symbolism. In S. Ratneshwar et al (eds), Inside Consumption (pp.273-291). New York: Routledge.