Episode 97 - Dove Detox Your Feed Ad Reviewed By Mars and We Are Social
Social media’s toxic influence can easily be underestimated. So Dove used disturbing Deepfake technology to drive the message home to teenage girls and their mums in this week’s Advertisers Watching Ads episode, chosen by Contagious.
This ad created by Ogilvy is part of a bigger project by the brand, the Self-Esteem Project which features educational videos, workbooks and more tools for parents and mentors. It’s an impactful campaign, but our guests only rated it 2.3 out of 5. Does it actually have the impact it was designed to, and what could have been done better?
Listen to the opinions of Feranmi Ogundipe (ex Content Strategist at L’Oréal), Roman Vorobiev (Global Design Director for Petcare at Mars) and Jim Coleman (UK CEO of We Are Social) and watch the full ad!
Automated Transcript
Episode 97 - Dove Detox Your Feed Ad Reviewed By Mars and We Are Social
Tom Ollerton 00:00
Hello and welcome to Advertisers Watching Ads. My name is Tom Ollerton. I'm the founder of Automated Creative, and this is a weekly show where brands watch other brands' ads. This week we are brought to you by our partners, Contagious, who helped us choose the ad this week. So please go and check those guys out after the show. So before we see this week's ad, let's meet this week's guests.
Feranmi Ogundipe 00:28
Hi, my name is Feranmi. I was the ex-strategist, Content Strategist at L'Oreal, and I'm happy to be on the show.
Roman Vorobiev 00:36
My name is Roman. I'm a Global Design Director for Petcare at Mars.
Jim Coleman 00:41
My name is Jim. I'm the CEO of We Are Social in the UK and oversee our North America business as well.
Tom Ollerton 00:48
So teenage girls are bombarded with toxic beauty advice everyday. But what if their mums told them to start injecting Botox or filling their teeth. Dove asks this question with some disturbing deep fake footage in this week's ad. So let's see it. So what I'm going ask you to do is give this execution a vote out of five. One, two, three... Two, a two, and a three. Jim, you're the parent of a daughter. How did that strike you?
Jim Coleman 05:01
What really kind of stood out to me here that I was just so amazed that the parents were shocked. As the, you know, the dad of a daughter and two sons. The idea that they don't know this just makes me think they're not actually doing their parenting job very well. It felt a little bit underwhelming. The emotional music, the emotional, kind of classical music, tried to build it up into this big thing, but I just thought the execution was a bit misguided. And if you, if you actually, if you go through to that website, all it offers is kind of tips and tricks on how to talk to your daughter. Basic parenting advice. There's parenting advice everywhere.
Feranmi Ogundipe 05:40
The first time I watched it, I was like, "Eh." You know... And I was like, "Eh," because it's a very risky take on the subject. I would say they missed the mark on making it more... Would I say acceptable to, to more people. I do agree that the message was very important, but it was kind of creepy in a way. It's kind of creepy in a way. And I do understand why some people will feel like or some parents might be shocked, though, Jim, because your social media feed is completely different from my social media feed. And sometimes kids even have like multiple accounts, you know, where they do some things that are not... You know, it can be very funny the way they try to hide things from their parents. So I think it's possible that parents don't know or parents are not widely aware of just how much of these things that the kids are exposed to. If they needed it to speak and do better in terms of sharing and visibility. Maybe a little less. Yeah, a little less. That's all I have to say.
Roman Vorobiev 06:41
The message itself is very important. This thing is not connected to any product. What kind of thing they are promising you is like they will have some tools to detoxify your stream, right? So they clearly show me the enemy and handing me the stone to throw in there, right? And like, "Hey, those are the people. Let's throw the stones in and then, we will give you more stones. And you can find them on our website." Like, you need to motivate this as positive. Like, I think they were, they were doing it very well in the past. So they were like really making people feeling great about sharing this information, making sure they are part of the solution instead of just, you know, throwing the stones into somebody. And then I also went into Twitter and saw the original post was like something like 820 views and only 30 likes. So the conversion on Twitter was not massively fantastic as well.
Jim Coleman 07:31
You know, if you look at the Twitter views, right? This isn't a ad that's going to go anywhere other than in YouTube. Pure intention is that this is shared and it hasn't been shared, like, to the scale that it really could have. And I think that's because it just, you know... A couple of reasons maybe, for me, because it's... It is a bit, you know, for some people a bit shocking but it also isn't compelling enough for people to go, "You need to see this. You need to see this." And therefore sharing it. Are we making the most of this opportunity? Dove have got such a enormous power to talk about the things that matter to women and to teenage daughters. And I feel like they've just lost a bit of that power in this.
Tom Ollerton 07:31
The enemy is the algorithm, right? At the end of the day, right? It's the shocking stuff that, all right, get the likes, and the comments, and the shares and that'll push it up the feeds, wherever that is. Like, that's loosely how we know the algorithms work. But then the people who pay for those algorithms to be there in the first place are the advertisers, right? I feel that they are asking the parents to do all the hard work and they've just made a gushy video.
Roman Vorobiev 08:35
What we need to recognize here is why people even going into social networks. There is a nice white paper like you can find it online called "Status as a Service." So people come in there to gain certain status. It's by Eugene Wei, and it's fantastic piece, actually. And so people gain, get in there to get certain dopamine back, you know. So they're sharing something that will get more likes, more shares, and stuff like that. And so there is a demand for these toxic bloggers, you know. It is like, they are not organically being sort of like pushed by algorithm. There is a demand that like being created by our society as well.
Tom Ollerton 09:14
What would be the next positive step to build on this work?
Feranmi Ogundipe 09:17
I wouldn't say take down the video, so let it ride. It's... There's still a message there, but develop a strategy for next steps. They put a lot of pressure on the parents but children hide a lot. Maybe empowering the girls themselves would be my next step because they're going to go out into the world and they're going to see all sort of things. And it would only make sense if they know how to detach, remove themselves from this type of content. So I would say that would be my next step.
Tom Ollerton 09:44
Roman, Jim, Feranmi, thank you so much for your time.
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