Dove has been running “Real Beauty” ads for more than a decade. Their agency Ogilvy in Toronto cam up with a pretty dope hack/secret weapon to raise awareness with photo re-touchers, art directions and designers to reconsider the messaging that they and their clients are promoting by thinning, coloring and generally adding or subtracting to women’s bodies for benefit of advertising to the masses.
By disguising a desirable Photoshop action in popular blogs Dove has seeded it in a way that folks will download it for their work. What appears to be a skin “glow” or brightening action actually reverses all previous manipulations and reverts images back to their original state and posts a layer of messaging about why they’re doing this. Clever hack for their cause.
Funny the Ad agency created this action, aren’t they the folks that direct and hire photographers w/ these specific skills. This is a terrible concept and the Ad agency is the one to blame, not the designers, retouchers and photographers who are just providing a service to keep their clients (aka Ad Agency and Product company) happy. I’d love to see Dove run some ads w/ normal sized people. Until that happens this is ridiculous.
It should read read: learn some retouching instead of using actions like this one, with horrific glow… Why did you downloed it in the first place. Slap yourself – avoid tempatation.
The bottom line is that youthful and ‘thin’ sells. It is part of our biology that we are attracted to the best looking and fit people we can attract for procreation. Just because obesity and ‘out of shape’ has become the norm, doesn’t mean we need to accept in our advertising. Lowering the standards to make more people feel okay with themselves is the fast road to ruin.
Personally, I prefer a little editing in my advertising; it forces me eat better and hit the gym more often. For thousands of years, societal framework; whether in animals or humans; has progressed because of the survival of the fittest. Pandering to the weakest slows progress down and makes the ‘herd’ more vulnerable to extinction.
Thank you! Well said.
Actually I don’t think thin is part of our biology and I somewhat doubt youth is – though I am willing to be swayed on youth.
But on thinness – no way that is biology.
Look back at advertising over the last 100 years.
Look at sex symbols from the 50s, 40, 30s etc.
Marilyn Monroe, Diana Dors, Jane Mansfield
Those ladies maybe sexy, but they are not thin, taught and terrific – at least not by today’ standards.
Check out the thighs on Jane: http://i147.photobucket.com/albums/r293/VIEWLINER/080103-3.jpg
They’d be photoshopped out in a second these days, but in those days they were sexy as fcuk.
If it were biology then we would not have changed our idea of the ideal women- shit look at the sexbombs Reuben used to paint. These days Reuben would be called a chubby chaser.
Thin may sell, but it is not biology – it’s psychology.
It’s training and it is the media that is training us.
For good or bad, for client or not.
And if you’re open minded to consider this idea, check out a women’s magazine and compre the models in it with the models in a “lads” magazine.
For the most part it is not men that want women thin. It is women.
Playboy bunnies, penthouse pets etc tend to be a fair bit curvier and heavier than most of the women you’d find in Cosmo, Marie Claire or Vogue.
All that said, yeah, the Dove thing is a stunt.
The message is the youtube video no the PS action.
It is Dove advertising, and it has “target” in mind!!!
They use trendy retouching issue to advertise their product. That’s all.
If they care so much they could eliminate some of toxic ingredients they are using in their products.
http://www.ewg.org/skindeep/product/479331/Dove_go_fresh_Cool_Moisture_Body_Wash%2C_Cucumber_%26_Green_Tea/
Freaking love this. This is advertising at it’s best. I agree. Better with curves!