Dove’s Body Positivity Campaign Backfires After Customers Troll Its Differently Shaped Bottles

OfficeChai Team

Marketers have been increasingly latching on to social causes to promote their products. Social campaigns can often work well – they don’t look like conventional ads, and can generate lots of buzz online. They also help buttress a company’s image as being aware and responsible. But every once in a while, a social issues campaign can backfire too.

Dove launched a campaign last week where it aimed to promote body positivity among women. Titled “Beauty comes in all shapes and sizes”, Dove launched a series of limited edition of bottles in different shapes — so there were tall bottles, short bottles, fat bottles – you get the idea. “Every woman’s vision of beauty is different and, if you ask us, these differences are there to be celebrated. That’s what real beauty is all about – the unique things that set us apart from each other and make us one of a kind,” said Dove on its website.

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Dove was probably expecting that its core audience of women would applaud its bold attempt to let the world know that all body shapes were okay. Things, however, turned out a little differently. Some women were concerned that a company was using an issue dear to them for profit.

Others were a lot more brusque.

 

And soon the trolling began.

And people were soon coming up with hilarious versions of how Dove would need to cover all body types.

People felt that there were already bottles that covered their body types.

And people realized that the differently shaped bottles were ultimately quite unnecessary.

But it didn’t stop there – soon some uncomfortable questions started being asked.

Dove might want to project that all body types are fine, but it makes lots of money off products that prey on other insecurities of women. It has a whole range of whitening creams, which basically tell women it’s better to be white than dark.

 

If whitening isn’t enough, it even sells a product that promises “Ultimate white” underarms.

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And people felt its latest attempt to show that all women were accepted was a bit hollow, and completely unnecessary.