UPDATE: Since posting this, I’ve received a number of emails that convinced me to edit the post considerably. In light of those edits, I deleted some comments because they didn’t really apply to the edited text. I made a mistake the first time around, and hope you’ll understand that I’ve tried to retroactively amend the record.
So yesterday, I posted about the Dove Onslaught[er]. It’s a video that casts Dove in a much less “progressive” light than how the brand recently positioned itself with the Dove Evolution and Dove Onslaught videos.
The Irony: A mad viral campaign has left Dove vulnerable to a grassroots driven PR crisis a couple years later.
Since I’m an impressionable thug who’s susceptible to mob-mentality (and have probably precluded myself from ever doing any work with Unilever in the future anyway), I thought I’d jump on the bandwagon and tell you all about how Unilever sucks at damage control, and thinks that we’re all f**king idiots.
Like the Onslaught video from Dove, Onslaught[er] features a young girl in the context of the world she’s facing. Instead of a white, freckled, red-headed American girl dealing with a sex-sells culture, however, the girl of Dove Onslaught[er] is an Indonesian girl, about 10 years old, who’s facing a future of environmental catastrophe. Text layover in the video reads:
98% of Indonesia’s lowland forest will be gone by the time Azizah is 25.
Most is destroyed to make palm oil, which is used in Dove products.
Talk to Dove before it’s too late.
Well, that’s just what I did. I sent them an email that read:
I am a blogger. I was impressed with your evolution and
onslaught ads. Then I saw this about your company:
http://www.dailymotion.com/relevance/search/hd/video/x566gw_dove-onslaug
hter-hd_newsI would like a comment.
Their response read something like you’re a gullible fool with no critical thinking skills, but here it is for you to judge:
Hello CT,
Thank you for writing.
Unilever has announced that all of its palm oil will be certified
sustainable by 2015. It is also supporting the call for an immediate
moratorium on any further deforestation in Indonesia for palm oil.Kind regards,
Your friends at Unilever
VC
So there it is… Take it for what it is…
