Real Beauty Bottles Draw Praise and Mean-Spirited Comments

Curvy, tall, short—whatever your body type Dove wants its new product packaging for shampoo to match your shape.

The new packaging designs are part of Dove’s long-running “Real Beauty” campaign that shares stories of real women and highlight’s the diversity in their body types and skin color. Now, the brand has transitioned that messaging to its product packaging.

“Real Beauty Bottles,” created by Ogilvy London, illustrate the real curves, thin lines and pear shapes of real women’s body types. The packaging, which comes in seven “body types” and will be available for a limited time, has been met with mixed reaction on social media, including confusion, praise and the routine mean-spirited comments.

While some, like @Giunero wrote: “What a great way to bring to life an inspiring brand message through the product form itself! #Dove. others were less complimentary. “Has body positive advertising gone too far? People are very confused about Dove’s new ‘Real Beauty Bottles’,” @shevolutionuk posted. And then there are the flurry of tweets from people who really did not like the new product packaging. @copyranter said, “Everybody with sense calls Dove’s “Real Beauty Bottles pandering bull _ _ _ _ except of course industry shills.”

The Real Beauty campaign was conceived by Ogilvy & Mather for Unilever in 2004 and has received plenty of positive press worldwide for its work to portray real women and their natural physical variations in its campaigns as opposed to airbrushed thin models. The campaign has drawn significant media coverage from popular women’s magazines, to talk shows to mainstream news broadcasts and publications. Unilever estimated the media exposure  to be worth more than 30 times the paid-for media space. However, throughout the years, the campaign has also drawn its share of criticism. Read the article …

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