Making Dove Fly Higher

Leading Global Brands Bulletin

http://www.effectivebrands.com

To date, over 250 global brand marketers from over 50
global brands have participated in an exciting learning
project on Leading Global Brands. 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.

Making Dove Fly Higher

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 the U.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.

Alessandro Manfredi is Vice President of Dove Global Masterbrand
and has been a part of the Dove Leadership Team for over 4 years.
Over the last 3 years Alessandro has led the development and
global roll-out of the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty. In his 11
years at Unilever, he has worked in Italy, the U.S. and the UK. Prior
to Unilever, he spent a year in Brussels working as a lecturer and
researcher on marketing and communications for Bocconi
University. Alessandro was born in Florence, Italy.

Philippe Harousseau is the U.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.

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.

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

Manfredi: 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 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.

Harousseau: 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 selfesteem
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.

Manfredi: 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.

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

Manfredi: 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.

EffectiveBrands: 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?

Manfredi: 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 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.

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

Manfredi: 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 spin-off: 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.

EffectiveBrands: 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?

Manfredi: 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.

EffectiveBrands 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.

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

Manfredi: 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 company that it was time to move from pilots to
full scale roll-out. Although 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.

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

Manfredi: 2004 was the year that the Campaign for Real Beauty
was launched in some of the biggest markets outside the U.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’.

Harousseau: 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.

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

Harousseau: 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.

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

Harousseau: 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’ selfesteem
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.

Principles of Effective Global Brand Leadership

Over the last 4 years, EffectiveBrands has developed The Eight
Principles of Effective Brands. In this discussion, Alessandro and
Philippe emphasize four of the principles of leading global brands
that were most related to their success:

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.

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.

Focusing the Global Brand Team
The Global Brand 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.

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.

About EffectiveBrands
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