Image: Fenty Beauty, 2018
“Women represent the largest emerging global market and economy because they are starting to have enormous
power over politics, sports, business and society. Brands are now waking up to these massive opportunities.”
- Annette Kimmitt, global middle market leader of Ernst & Young
power over politics, sports, business and society. Brands are now waking up to these massive opportunities.”
- Annette Kimmitt, global middle market leader of Ernst & Young
Background to our era
The modern era in which we live is defined by individualism, fighting for equality and technology. All of these aspects have affected the world of marketing and the new commercials are starting to reflect the change that has begun in the society with feminism or movements against racial segregation in the second half of the twentieth century. The new millennium has brought us platforms that do not present just stereotypical images and normative messages and moreover brands that are not afraid to take the leap and come up with new forms and styles of advertising.
The fight for equality of men and women can be seen on numerous levels. Female empowerment within the ideology of feminism is one of the examples in our era. What has started as a movement of fighting for equality in basic aspects of life, such as job opportunities, equal payment has come a long way and moved into the more abstract sphere. Instead of fighting for the recognition in the eyes of the men, the females of our world stopped deriving their worth from men’s views (Faye, 1998). Within the feminist framework, there are also specific branches that focus on |
women of colour through the intersectional approach. They say that not all the women have been oppressed in the same way and therefore the way of empowerment is not the same for them (Roth, 2004). Women of all ethnicities, races, shapes and any other aspects have been actively trying to become equal to men.
With the help of individualism as another important ideological framework of our era, feminism has found new ways of achieving their goals. People become more and more individualized, living for themselves. Their decisions are affected by their desires and plans instead of just simply following social norms that have dictated their lives before (Franck, 2001).The empowerment of women is based on realizing their qualities and perceiving themselves as strong and valuable in their own eyes, rather than searching for outside approval (Chang & Calhoun, 2006).
The technological change has played a huge role in empowerment present in the marketing of various brands. What has previously been seldom challenged, is now under surveillance. Technology, and the Internet especially created a platform for people to give the companies and their campaigns immediate feedback and the opinion of the consumers has become influential (Gunther, 2015). Therefore, marketing had to start reflect the changes in the society that were neglected in the nineties for example. It has been detached from the reality in the last decades of the twentieth century, when it still presented the stereotypical images instead of reflecting the social change. But for most of the marketing in the twenty-first century, the brands are aiming to be female-oriented, empowering and overall celebrating women. The most important aspect of this shift in the marketing is the idea of inclusivity emerging within the last decades.
Inclusivity as a concept is based on the idea that all the people are equal and should be accepted as a valued part of the society. As opposed to many ideologies focusing on the majorities in the societies, the idea of inclusiveness tries to celebrate people from different backgrounds. In the world of marketing, this is naturally an interesting concept, because once a brand has inclusive marketing, they can gain a larger scope of people willing to purchase their products. Therefore, today, we can see a relatively new emerging trend in the area of marketing.
With the help of individualism as another important ideological framework of our era, feminism has found new ways of achieving their goals. People become more and more individualized, living for themselves. Their decisions are affected by their desires and plans instead of just simply following social norms that have dictated their lives before (Franck, 2001).The empowerment of women is based on realizing their qualities and perceiving themselves as strong and valuable in their own eyes, rather than searching for outside approval (Chang & Calhoun, 2006).
The technological change has played a huge role in empowerment present in the marketing of various brands. What has previously been seldom challenged, is now under surveillance. Technology, and the Internet especially created a platform for people to give the companies and their campaigns immediate feedback and the opinion of the consumers has become influential (Gunther, 2015). Therefore, marketing had to start reflect the changes in the society that were neglected in the nineties for example. It has been detached from the reality in the last decades of the twentieth century, when it still presented the stereotypical images instead of reflecting the social change. But for most of the marketing in the twenty-first century, the brands are aiming to be female-oriented, empowering and overall celebrating women. The most important aspect of this shift in the marketing is the idea of inclusivity emerging within the last decades.
Inclusivity as a concept is based on the idea that all the people are equal and should be accepted as a valued part of the society. As opposed to many ideologies focusing on the majorities in the societies, the idea of inclusiveness tries to celebrate people from different backgrounds. In the world of marketing, this is naturally an interesting concept, because once a brand has inclusive marketing, they can gain a larger scope of people willing to purchase their products. Therefore, today, we can see a relatively new emerging trend in the area of marketing.
The problem of the lack of representation was strongly felt by the focus group participants, the inclination toward wider diversity was put forward as a distinctive characteristic of the modern campaigns:
-It's still about women, still not black.
-Women that can be portrayed as white.
-Nowadays things are changing, but till a few years ago it was just about white girls in the Advertisement for beauty products
Successful modern campaign
- Finally - real women! |
We started a discussion -
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The campaign is aimed at confronting the traditional societal norms concerning the women’s appearance by telling personalized stories of independent female characters, who in different ways challenge standards of femininity and still celebrated. This campaign is one of the more successful one from Dove. Their Self-esteem project is presented here as well and the fact that they decided to bet on the individual approach and let numerous women have their own story within the clip proved to be key to their success.
In the commercial, Dove encourages viewers to base their self-esteem on subjective perception of beauty, not visual, but inner, the stress in on being different and professionally sufficient, to excel in what you are doing. DOVE’s “My beauty, My say”is a slogan that means that women decide for themselves, what is beautiful. They all are beautiful in their own perception and they present to the viewers that the understanding is subjective and independent of the objective social realities. This idea is completely in alignment with the empowerment and individualization of women that stopped deriving women's bueaty or their worth from how they are perceived by others. The beauty is not about appearance anymore, but individual peculiarities and personal achievement.
The characters are real women – they are presented as bright self-sufficient personalities. How? They tell the story themselves, and therefore bring the multivocal, pluralistic bricolage of diversity. This is, interestingly, the requirement of impartial anthropological research. one which is free from the norms of the observers society, thus these features of the advertisement go in line with the campaign’s idea of liberating beauty. We get to see a number of women who would not fit into the category of femininity in the previous decades. If we were in the 20th century where the idea of what a female person is supposed to look like was very specific, these women would not be given a platform to express themselves.
In the commercial, Dove encourages viewers to base their self-esteem on subjective perception of beauty, not visual, but inner, the stress in on being different and professionally sufficient, to excel in what you are doing. DOVE’s “My beauty, My say”is a slogan that means that women decide for themselves, what is beautiful. They all are beautiful in their own perception and they present to the viewers that the understanding is subjective and independent of the objective social realities. This idea is completely in alignment with the empowerment and individualization of women that stopped deriving women's bueaty or their worth from how they are perceived by others. The beauty is not about appearance anymore, but individual peculiarities and personal achievement.
The characters are real women – they are presented as bright self-sufficient personalities. How? They tell the story themselves, and therefore bring the multivocal, pluralistic bricolage of diversity. This is, interestingly, the requirement of impartial anthropological research. one which is free from the norms of the observers society, thus these features of the advertisement go in line with the campaign’s idea of liberating beauty. We get to see a number of women who would not fit into the category of femininity in the previous decades. If we were in the 20th century where the idea of what a female person is supposed to look like was very specific, these women would not be given a platform to express themselves.
...you don't assume that women are any other thing than just a 'housewife' [about the past ads] - and now you can see that there is a little more of diversity, it's for every type of women. The focus group participants realised this shift towards multiple roles new campaigns offer females
We get to see a boxer, a plus-size fashion blogger, a woman with a less feminine style or another woman with a teeth gap - they are all challenging the traditional understanding of femininity. They are all very different, bringing numerous races and shapes of women into the ad, and individually challenge the common beauty standards. Boxing, for example, is mostly viewed as a male sport because of the perceived violence that is mostly understood as masculine feature. "A pretty woman should not play such sport" is a stereotypical idea that the woman in the ad has to face, but does not let it affect her world and continues to become the best. The plus-size fashion blogger, similarly to the boxer, has to face numerous stereotypes, but is able to ignore them and continue to be herself. Despite the fact that there is stigma against plus-size people in our society, and they are generally viewed as not the normal ones, she continues to use her platform and promote her thoughts and style and anything she likes. The woman with the teeth gap learned to embrace her so-called flaw, because there is no one who is allowed to dictate what she should do with her body and her life. Lastly, a woman who has more masculine style, just because society said it is more masculine, similarly to all the previous people appearing in the campaign, completely disregards the social norms. She is not the slave of the society and therefore does not have to be the one the follow them despite her own preferences.
Moreover the advertisement is just a part of the bigger campaign. For example, on the web-site Dove has personal pages for every female character with additional details of their stories. They all are very unique personalities with their own life stories presented to the audience. Therefore the viewer is getting the sense of individuality, and empowerment by getting to listen to people who were unafraid to share.
All of these women come and challenge the ideas they have been brought up with, because the mindset of the society is still in the process of change.
Yet, their own perception of themselves wins over being afraid of what people mind think. They are their own people and do not have to oblige the norms if they do not like them. The era of individualism has raised women unafraid to challenge how the world views them and therefore, they are helping to form a new mindset that is being more and more prevalent not only in the beauty industry.
Moreover the advertisement is just a part of the bigger campaign. For example, on the web-site Dove has personal pages for every female character with additional details of their stories. They all are very unique personalities with their own life stories presented to the audience. Therefore the viewer is getting the sense of individuality, and empowerment by getting to listen to people who were unafraid to share.
All of these women come and challenge the ideas they have been brought up with, because the mindset of the society is still in the process of change.
Yet, their own perception of themselves wins over being afraid of what people mind think. They are their own people and do not have to oblige the norms if they do not like them. The era of individualism has raised women unafraid to challenge how the world views them and therefore, they are helping to form a new mindset that is being more and more prevalent not only in the beauty industry.
Taking into the consideration the individualistic values and subjective approach to beauty ideals, it could be said that the make up loses the importance. New campaigns do not focus on the product, but on empowerment and highlighting the individuality, looking almost "like pro feminism videos".
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If you don’t reach a certain standard you’re not good enough, and in order to reach it you have to use their products, but you don’t have to – you’re beautiful the way you are, you don’t need make up. |
What does this all mean?
The idea of equality and individualism is prevalent in the society. Similarly to how we were able to perceive this trend in the modern campaigning, our participants of the survey pinpointed that the our commercials are predominantly diverse, and inclusive. Moreover, the word 'modern' appeared numerous times, what would suggest that the idea of inclusivity is connected to something new and something trendy at the moment. Therefore, our analyses are supported by the popular vote as well.
The focus groups are also in alignment with our conclusions about the modern era. They perceive that the women in the advertisement today are unburdened by the social roles, they do not have to be the perfect housewives, but rather they are all bringing some kind of uniqueness and therefore help the consumers understand that beauty does not mean perfection.
Our period, as opposed to the previous decades became the era of freedom, relaxation of the social norms that once dictated women's lives. Women today are gaining voice and they are using it to promote the differences. In the beauty industry, this has resulted in the individualistic approach to beauty, where it refers to whatever individuals consider beautiful. Modern age is unapologetic about the differences. On the contrary, they are praising them, and women do not have to fit into the template of a perfect housewife/soldier/doll/high-school sweetheart. Beauty standards and social norms are challenged and females liberated.
The focus groups are also in alignment with our conclusions about the modern era. They perceive that the women in the advertisement today are unburdened by the social roles, they do not have to be the perfect housewives, but rather they are all bringing some kind of uniqueness and therefore help the consumers understand that beauty does not mean perfection.
Our period, as opposed to the previous decades became the era of freedom, relaxation of the social norms that once dictated women's lives. Women today are gaining voice and they are using it to promote the differences. In the beauty industry, this has resulted in the individualistic approach to beauty, where it refers to whatever individuals consider beautiful. Modern age is unapologetic about the differences. On the contrary, they are praising them, and women do not have to fit into the template of a perfect housewife/soldier/doll/high-school sweetheart. Beauty standards and social norms are challenged and females liberated.