October 3, 2007
Onslaught: Media Irony of the DayPosted by Bryan
In what may prove to be the beauty industry's equivalent to Big Tobacco's "surgeon general warning" on all it's products, Unilever (and more specifically, Dove) has released its "Onslaught" campaign, as a follow-up to the effective, insightful "Evolution" ad.
Note, that this is as PG-13 as anything I might link. The images are provocative and powerful. Remember, too, that this is a commercial, which if you haven't seen it, you likely will, and possibly with your children present.
Savvy of Dove to take a "we're not like the rest of these guys" approach to beauty product marketing, although they probably have to sit at the Dork Table in the Beauty Industry lunchroom cafeteria because of it.
We concur that you will have to speak with your daughter about having a proper perspective on beauty. It came across our "family radar" last year with our oldest in 4th grade. We found that one of the worst offenders for presenting a confusing, conflicting message was People Magazine, which we had picked up for some in-flight reading last year. It had on its cover a triumphant piece about Katherine McPhee's victory over bulimia, juxtaposed in an onslaught (hmm...good name, Dove) of imagery that would ingrain any notion that to look like this, bulimia was the only viable route.
Our beauties...unretouched.
