Dove started on the Indian market with the
introduction of skin care products and since 2007 also offers hair care
products. Today it is the country's fastest growing hair category brand. The
main focus, as it appears from their website, is skin and hair care as well as
antiperspirants in India.
In my analysis I concentrate on Dove's Cream Beauty Bathing Bar which is promoted as especially nourishing to the skin. The description on the website says "Dove Cream Beauty Bathing Bar replenishes your skin’s lost moisture each time you use it."
This is how the packaging looks like:
The packaging and the images of the product are mainly in blue and white and very soft and warm color shades are used. This reminds of cleanliness and softness of the products to the skin and also is associated with young age.
The TV commercial on the Indian market for the Beauty Bathing Bar shows two friends who play a guessing game:
Two
women appear to be at one of their homes and one tells the other about her new
discovery. Then they playfully test the difference of Dove and “ordinary soap”
to their faces. They seem to have much fun and to be enjoying their testing.
The spot is very light-hearted and the music supports the playful, happy mood
which is to be transported.
The message of the spot is proposed by one of the
women who says: “This is my Dove bar now!” This utterance is followed by the
advice to “Try the Dove difference yourself today!” So we find a nicely formulated
proposal to buying and trying. The tone is slightly assertive but still
conveyed in a very friendly and charming way.
The more current commercial for the Cream Beauty Bathing Bar
shows women playing the guessing game in the streets:
This spot shows several pairs of friends who try the
Dove soap bar on one side of the face and “ordinary soap” on the other side of
their face. The results are the same for all women: Dove makes smooth and silky
skin. As in the other spot, the message is nicely gotten across. Some women
want to keep the soap bars and one woman says: “Now, I’m going to try Dove!”
This supports the company’s request for the audience to “Try the Dove
experience yourself today!”
Both spots are in Hindu and have English subtitles which ensures that a big audience can understand it.
In both spots we find that the advertising matches
India’s high-context culture. The advertising messages are not too explicit
and entail contextual cues. There is no assertive request for customers to
buying and trying but this message is indirectly shown to the audience by the
convinced women in the spot who tried Dove on the recommendation of their
friend. After having tried the product each woman wants to keep using the soap
bar for their daily face wash.
The consumer is not solely provided with factual
information but receives metaphorical and off-record information. So this is
rather a soft-sell approach.
As collectivism plays a big role in Indian culture, we
never see one single woman. It is always pairs of two women having fun testing
the soap bars. This emphasizes collectivist advantages of the product and does
not suggest that upon using Dove products one is excluded from society. The
association rather is that Dove helps to improve social relations.
There, however, are success-oriented features in this
spot. There is no prevalent but slightly assertive tone in the advertising and
through the comparison with “ordinary soap” the audience is demonstrated the
product’s superiority. This is a form of competitive advertising. Competitive
advertising works in India as the culture is more masculine than feminine of
Hofstede’s scale.
Corporate Social Responsibility:
For the Indian market, Dove does not state a social
mission on their website. However, they use real-world women instead of
professional models for their advertising in India and also place emphasis on
their real beauty is about how you feel campaign.
Dove also promotes their brand in India by
broadcasting Real Beauty Sketches:
The Real Beauty Sketches are not tailor-made for the
Indian market. They show American women. Still, the messages are relevant for
Indian women as each woman around the globe wants to be beautiful and sometimes
has self-doubts.
The Real Beauty Sketches campaign in India is
followed by the Camera Shy campaign. In the spot the sequences of grown-up
women hiding from the camera are followed by young girls dancing and presenting
themselves to the camera in a very self-confident and unburdened way. And the
question under investigation is why women stopped thinking that they are
beautiful along the way from childhood to adulthood. This spot is designed to
make people rethink their attitudes towards themselves.
So in India Dove shows some intentions to prove good citizenship by delivering the message that women should stop having self-doubts and feel beautiful the way they are. Obviously their intention goes towards building up a love brand in the Indian market by establishing emotional bonds between their customers and their brand.
Sources:
http://www.dove.in/en/
http://www.youtube.com/user/doveindia/videos
