Do you remember the “Real Beauty Campaign”? Do you think it was powerful? Do you think this can relate to “Real Beauty in Pharma Marketing.”
The Dove campaign, developed by Unilever and Ogilvy, did not come out of the mind of a senior advertising executive (musing on what women want). Instead, it is a textbook case of using consumer research and listening to consumers before developing a creative brief.
Global research conducted by Ogilvy found that only 2% of women described themselves as “beautiful.” The majority felt that they could not live up to beauty standards reflected in marketing campaigns.
Research indicated that women do not want to be told how to appear beautiful. Supermodel advertising was fueling issues they already had with self-esteem. Women wanted to be accepted for who they are. They were looking for products that reflected their own perception of beauty.
Dove met this need, tying its functional benefit (moisturizing, which women need) to an honest tonality that is inclusive and achievable.
This marketing campaign helped to drive phenomenal growth in Dove sales. Over the following years, sales grew from $2.5B to $4B. It moved Dove from commodity-based marketing into emotionally based differentiation.
Effective, emotionally based marketing is being used even in difficult (and regulated) industries like financial services and pharma. For example, marketing for Cologuard (Exact Sciences/Digitas), “Not a Lonely Journey” (Biogen/VML), and Xdemvy (Tarsus/FCB). In a similar fashion, Merz is marketing its product a non-invasive facial therapy, Ultherapy, that is an alternative to other approaches like Botox. The Merz campaign focuses on the idea that “Energy is the future of beauty”—works because it reflects a mindset shift: focus on vitality and confidence, not turning back the clock
Using some of the most advanced AI techniques, our ThemeNav@ approach enables us to gather deep insights into emotional needs that drive human behavior. These are objective observations that go way beyond the information that has been available from past research approaches. If you would like to learn more about how our work could benefit your teams, please contact me.