Brand History of Dove

Unilever is a multinational company that began producing goods for army soldiers in the 1950s. Since they were constantly exposed to seawater and sand, the army was suffering from hard and dry skin conditions at the time. Unilever then decided to develop a soap to prevent their skin from becoming hard and dry. The soap was later converted into a commercial product by the company in 1957. Dove was born as soap got popular.

Dove's soap bars took on a unique, curved shape, and Dove packaging featured simple and elegant coloring around the now-iconic Dove bird logo. The Dove logo represents joy and prosperity. To put it another way, the yellow dove symbol represents love, kindness, and purity, and the letter colors of "Dove" represent excellence, determination, and great quality in the product.

Dove soon carved out a niche in the soap business by developing a soap that did not dry out the skin but instead moisturized it, earning consumer trust with their high-quality, dependable products. Dove's soap ads reflected these efforts to distinguish, saying that Dove soap was "far healthier for your skin" than conventional soap because of its mildness and the presence of "one-quarter cleansing cream." 'Suddenly soap is old-fashioned!' and 'Dove creams your skin while you wash' were among the taglines used in Dove advertisements.

With the advent of the Dove Face Test campaign, Dove advertising concentrated mostly on the product's facial benefits. To showcase Dove's non-drying qualities, print commercials and TV spots often included a close-up of a woman's face while she washed half in Dove and the other half in normal soap. In one such location, the tagline says, "Try the Dove face test and you'll soon never wash with soap again." At the time, Dove was offered in a plain white bar or a lightly scented pink bar.

Dove's popular and pioneering 'Real Beauty' campaign was inspired by internal Dove and the development of future that revealed only 2% of women feel themselves to be beautiful. This alarming number was tempered by a Dove advertisement that conveyed the same message.

Advertisers frequently employed celebrities to endorse cosmetic products back then, as they do now. Surprisingly, Groucho Marx's recognisable visage was one of many prominent faces featured in Dove's television commercials in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

In 1997, the Internet era opened up a whole new world of advertising opportunities for the brand with the launch of beauty websites, online purchasing, and viral campaigns. Female representation is becoming more common, and women are being targeted in almost every market category; nonetheless, some experts believe the era of sexist advertising has not yet passed. 'There is still a lot of advertising available that might have aired in the 1950s,' says Kestin of Ogilvy.

In the late 1990s, Dove introduced a slew of new products, including deodorants, body lotions, cleansers, and shampoo. Dove expanded from a single product to a full beauty brand in 2003, with hand- and face-care items.

Dove Canada created its own coffee-table book and traveling exhibition in response to a global mission to broaden the perception of beauty. Female photographers were invited to submit work depicting their vision of beauty. 

Dove's 'Evolution' viral film, created by Ogilvy Toronto, was originally uploaded on campaignforrealbeauty.ca and then on YouTube in October 2006, and it quickly became the most popular viral in the world. The film won Grand Prix honors in the Viral and Film categories at Cannes Lions 2007, demonstrating the media's fals