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Vermeer BulletinLeading Global Brands

Dove:Making Dove fly higher

Over 500 global brand marketers from more than 50 global brands have participated in the Leading Global Brands™ project. All participants are the CEO, Chief Marketing Officer, Global/Regional Brand Director, or local Brand Director of a global brand. They all share a desire to be thought leaders in developing ideas and best practices for leading the global brands of the future, the Global Brand Benchmark™ database now includes contributions from over 5,000 global brand marketers.

Philippe Harousseau, is theU.S. Marketing Director Dove Skin & Masterbrand. In 2005 Philippe led the launch of Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty in the U.S. Philippe has worked for Unilever for 17 years, in Paris, London and New York locations, as well as currently in Greenwich, CT.

Peter Kirkby is VP Marketing Strategy & Excellence (MS&E) for GSK Consumer Healthcare. Working within the Future Group his global responsibilities include consumer and market insight, strategy, brand and communications planning, digital marketing, agency management and the company’s marketing capability program. Prior to joining GSK, Peter worked for Procter & Gamble and for a consultancy.

The focus of this month’s Leading Global Brands Bulletin is on how the Dove Global Brand Team was able to overcome organizational challenges, launch a winning new global marketing campaign around the world, and partner with theU.S. Dove team. In doing so, Dove was able to effectively leverage learning from other countries to develop a U.S. specific marketing program that has won praise both internally and externally, and accelerated the 50 year old brand to over significant growth in 2005.

The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty (CFRB) has received enormous attention from consumers and press worldwide by raising awareness around Dove’s mission to make women feel more beautiful every day by challenging today’s stereotypical view of beauty and inspiring women to take great care of themselves. The campaign has been launched in over 30 countries and has led to significant consumer recognition and sales growth.

V: Can you describe how and why the work on the Campaign for Real Beauty actually started?

AM: I remember it very well. Dove was the first Unilever brand to be assigned a dedicated Global Brand Team some 5 years ago. We were still

“...the question that kept coming back was ‘What is Dove’s

philosophy on beauty”Alessandro Manfredi - VP of Dove Global

Masterbrand

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discovering our role and about 25 people, including most members of the new global team, but also some regional and local team members attended an intensive Unilever leadership course in late 2002. After many soul-searching team sessions, the question that kept coming back was ‘What is Dove’s philosophy on beauty?’ Looking deeper into the question of beauty, the team discovered that only 2% of women were comfortable with saying that they are beautiful, and that there are girls as young as pre-teen who ‘feel’ fat. We made the connection to our brand and decided that we would make a real difference, and build the brand in a way that would have a real impact on society. With Dove we felt like we had a brand with the potential to truly connect to people, and that long term our 1/4 moisturizing cream claim alone was just not going to cut it.

PH: Everyday we see models in magazines and on television that have ‘perfect’ bodies and flawless skin. There are few examples out there to counter the belief that these images define attractiveness in women and the lack of balance erodes self-esteem over time. We didn’t want to be a part of perpetuating a stereotype. The Campaign for Real Beauty seeks to put balance back into the perceptions of women that are created by public images and messages. We are interested in helping to build rather than erode self-esteem, so that women are encouraged to love themselves for their individuality.

AM. Of course we are not a charity; we recognized immediately that the CFRB presented an opportunity to have a positive impact on society, get closer to Dove’s original roots, and build our business by creating a stronger emotional bond with our consumers. Real beauty is relevant to all women.

V: You mentioned a new Global Brand Team. How were you organized at the time and did this help or hinder your success?

AM. At the time we were the first Dove Global Brand Team and no one knew exactly what we were supposed to do. We were a small dedicated team of 5 in the center with dotted lines to all of the various regions. Dove marketers in each country reported formally to their country business unit heads and only informally to the Global Brand Team. We recognized that we could not just push through our ideas, so we set out to win the trust of our stakeholders with a mix of strategic persuasion and very concrete business results from early pilot markets.

V: These ideas represented a radical deviation from what competitors and Dove itself have been doing for years. How did you address the worries and resistance by people that wanted to stick with the status quo?

AM. Taking this on was a bold move at the time, but it was something that a few of us felt very passionate about bringing to life. Our first focus was to lock down and start communicating the brand positioning in a way that would inspire all Dove marketers around the world to support the work. Our brand stewardship workshops on every continent ensured that the word was out and we had the attention of marketers in over 50 countries. We also quickly started engaging with the many important internal

“Vermeer helped us organize a ‘new style’ Global Brand Team

meeting...based on the Global Brand BenchmarkTM findings...”

Alessandro Manfredi - VP of Dove Global Masterbrand

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and external stakeholders that we needed on our side. The mindset behind our approach was one of Servant Leadership. We felt that as a Global Brand Team we had a duty to present a clear strategic direction for the brand that was basically nonnegotiable, but at the same time we really needed to listen and understand genuine concerns and practical needs so that we could develop solutions that addressed them. Once these were clear we had our work cut out.

V: Did the workshops provide you with enough understanding of the countries’ support needs from you as a Global Brand Team?

AM.Not really. We had a lot to share and we recognized that everyone needed some time to think through the new strategy and consider the practical implications for their market. This is why we decided to do a Global Brand Benchmark Study. This benchmark involved reaching out to our marketers at all levels across some 12-15 Dove countries to really understand where the global and regional brand teams were adding value to the markets, and where we were actually getting in the way of them doing their local jobs effectively. We also compared our global role to that of relevant competitors and other companies we felt we could learn from.

The study gave us a real understanding of what to focus on. In addition there was an immediate spinoff: just the fact that we were asking the questions instantly improved our relationship with many country teams. To them it was a clear signal that we recognized that global branding has to be about than local business.

V: One of the survey conclusions was that there was significant confusion around the priorities and roles & responsibilities on the brand. How did you go about addressing this?

AM. It’s true. Up to this moment we had held quarterly Global Brand team meetings where 30 people from around the world would show up and exchange ideas. Although interesting, these meetings were far from effective because we did not really take decisions. Different regions had different priorities and the new structure with dotted lines created a lot of confusion so we decided to take this head on and make the changes needed to make the structure work for the brand. Vermeer helped us organize a ‘new style’ Global Brand Team meeting in 2003 where together we prioritized key global brand team initiatives based on the Global Brand Benchmark findings and agreed to empower a subset of the team to develop a new brand operating model and lock down a single global brand strategy. Soon after we created the Dove Board – a team of seven marketers representing all important Dove regions, but taking responsibility for one global Dove strategy. I am sure that this was the turning point of our success.

V: Why did creating this board make such a difference?

It only took us two days to go work through a ‘Pyramid’ process and define our new brand vision, mission and strategy, and by working together we built an unprecedented level of trust among the members.

The global brand strategy became known as the Dove“One-pager” a document that everyone across the Dove world now lives and breathes. We also began to run the brand in a much more effective manner. There were weekly conference calls for the Board to discuss and align, regular web conferences to communicate with all important marketers in key countries, and we created ‘Planet Dove’ – an Intranet site used to gather and distribute best implementation practices from all over the World. In 2003 and early 2004 Campaign for Real Beauty pilots were run in three smaller countries. The new Dove Board members worked side by side to communicate and convince senior stakeholders across the whole com- pany that it was time to move from pilots to full scale roll-out. Although

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initially results were mixed because we did not have the advertising right yet, results improved dramatically as local marketers became passionate about the campaign and developed exciting local activation programs to bring the campaign alive. It became like a wild-fire.

V: You have described 2004 as the turning point for the Campaign for Real Beauty, why is that?

AM. 2004 was the year that the Campaign for Real Beauty was launched in some of the biggest markets outside theU.S. Both the U.K. and German markets quickly reported back huge success. And finally the U.S.,our largest market started taking on the Campaign for Real Beauty. I had a personal interest in ensuring Dove’s success in the U.S. market. Even though I was a member of the global team, I was based in the U.S. and sat on the same floor as the U.S. marketing team. I knew that if I ever wanted to consider

myself a good Global Brand Manager, I would have to help the U.S. succeed. I saw an opportunity to boost the relationship between the global team and arguably our most important local ‘customer’.

PH.Toward the middle of 2004 a number of factors facilitated the adoption of the campaign in the U.S. We saw the Campaign for Real Beauty roll out in the pilot markets and its success in the U.K. It was clear that the global team had cracked the advertising.

The strategy was solid and that it wasn’t likely to change. We felt the time was ripe to leverage the global success in our market. Our new was team comprised of people with non-traditional marketing backgrounds, which gave us an opportunity to think about the CFRB differently. One of the first things we decided was to build a stronger relationship with Dove’s Global Brand Team so that we could leverage the learning from other countries to our full advantage.

V: How did you translate the new Dove global strategy into a local market plan?

PH. The simple message of ‘real beauty’ helped us to rally people behind our cause. Connecting women with our message was our primary focus. In our advertising, we considered using the same advertising that ran in the U.K., but ultimately decided that we wanted to use American women in our advertising to make the ad feel more ‘real’ to American consumers and to create local ‘celebrities’. Again, our strong relationship with the Global Brand Team allowed us to have an open debate on the pros and cons of developing new ads for the U.S. and they supported our decision. The women were featured in our ‘Firming’ ad in their underwear. As the media caught on to the campaign, the women were interviewed and featured on many of the most important TV show in the US.

V: You recently ran an ad about girls’ self-esteem during the Super Bowl. Was that also based on an idea from another country?

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Yes and no. The idea of the “little girls” campaign was actually created in Canada. But the idea to put the ad next a male dominated TV event like the Super bowl came out of the US team. I think it is a great example to demonstrate that we are truly working as an effective global brand. We are not just copying ideas from other places. Instead, we are leveraging a global platform and making it completely locally relevant. The platform of debunking beauty is global. In America we felt we could not do it in a more challenging way then airing an ad about daughters with self esteem issues during the quintessential male sport event on television. The Super Bowl ad gave us exposure to 90 million people and created enormous buzz. The specific ad talking about girls’ self-esteem allowed us to break through the clutter of boorish and childish beer, soda and financial services ads. Ultimately, it gave us the opportunity to raise awareness of the Campaign for Real Beauty and drive growth across all Dove categories.

Global Marketing Capability Program™

Over the last 5 years, Vermeer has developed the Global Marketing Capability program™. In this discussion, Alessandro and Philippe emphasize some of the underlying phases of leading global brands that were most related to their success:

Connect-Adopting a Servant Leadership Mindset

By actively incorporating a Servant Leadership management style early in process, the Dove Global Brand Team recognized the importance of developing trusting relationships with Dove marketers in each country. Similarly, Philippe Harousseau’s team actively sought to build trust and increase collaboration with the Global Brand Team. This allowed the freedom to try bold new initiatives and grow the Dove business in the U.S.

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Inspire-Inspiring Personal Commitment to the Brand

The philosophy behind Campaign for Real Beauty touched something in each of the members of the Global Brand Team and all local Dove marketers. As a result, each of them made a personal commitment to bring the philosophy to life. Part of this included communicating the new philosophy to other Dove marketers across the globe to create buy-in for the new direction of the Dove brand. In the U.S. the Dove team made personal commitments to ensuring the success of the Dove brand in their market. Everyone was proud to work on Dove because the brand was doing something to help a greater cause – building women’s self-esteem.

Focus-Focusing the Global Brand Team

The Vermeer Benchmark™ helped focus the Global Brand Team and served as a basis for prioritizing the brand activities. The Dove one-pager strategy document and brand stewardship workshops were opportunities for Dove marketers around the World to understand what to focus on and how to learn from other countries.

Organize-Creating absolute Clarity on Roles & Responsibilities

When it was unclear who should or could do what the leaders of Dove went beyond the formal structure and decided how they were going to collaborate more effectively. Later on it was clearly agreed between global and local teams the role that each would play.

About Vermeer

Vermeer is the only global marketing consultancy focused on unleashing purpose-led growth through the development and embedding of consumer insight-led marketing strategy, structure and capability.

They provide solutions to strategic marketing challenges, rooting their approach in consumer research, stakeholder understanding and financial analysis. Vermeer’s whole-brain thinking brings an intrinsically multi-lens and practical approach to their work.

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