Maybe hypocritical Dove ads are right: Parents are responsible!
Unilever’s big argument to all the criticism they’ve received about the Dove Onslaught/Axe hypocrisy is that each brand is unique and must be tailored to its specific audience. (And that the Axe ads are just a joke.)
Ad-types join in with hey, Unilever’s “just a parent company.”
The Situationist rips this defense into teeny-tiny soap-flake pieces in Hey Dove, Talk to Your Parent! (a title so good, I’m going to hire these guys for my new blog). And to my point:
Telling parents to “talk to [their] daughters before the beauty industry does,” is equivalent to telling parents to teach their children how to float in thin air before gravity gets to them.
Read it, especially if you’re still in the but-at-least-Dove-is-doing-something camp.
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Near Minneapolis? Spend Tuesday evening, November 6 at a panel discussion/book signing for Not Just a Pretty Face: The Ugly Side of the Beauty Industry by Stacy Malkan. Pre-registration is required. Click image for complete information.
October 22nd, 2007 at 12:31 pm
Oooh - very good, Situationist. Excellent analysis. Made me rethink — and that isn’yt that easy to do :-) And, yes, best title of the day award goes to them.
October 26th, 2007 at 4:03 am
[…] advertisement that I like? Well, many feminists don’t like it, including this fabulous feminist mother blogger who I actually discovered through her post on that ad. It has been really interesting to see how […]
October 26th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
kind of like being “a little bit pregnant.” They made the choice to be “a little bit responsible” when they contradicted themselves.
Guess it always comes down to the moolah.
November 13th, 2007 at 4:55 pm
[…] you, the blogosphere has been carping about the Unilever disconnect for ages, including me. From Onslaught, to the skin lightening campaign heavily marketed to my […]