Advertising: In Criticizing Rival Products, a Dove Campaign Is Called Unfair

In Criticizing Rival Products, a Dove Campaign Is Called Unfair

DOVE, the Unilever brand, has been widely lauded for its latest advertising effort, an online video with a forensic sketch artist that compares the negative self-image some women have with the more complimentary impressions of strangers.

But the response to an advertising campaign that Dove Deep Moisture Body Wash introduced in the fall has been decidedly less flattering, and brought a stinging rebuke from the National Advertising Division.

The campaign includes a print ad showing a bottle of Dove body wash next to a bottle, meant to represent competitors, that is wrapped in barbed wire and described with a single word: “Harsher.” The headline asks, “Doesn’t your skin deserve better?”

Online videos pit Dove against other body washes in side-by-side tests. In the videos, an actress places pieces of pinkish paper that she says “were designed to react like real skin” in jars of water containing either Dove or a rival product and shakes them vigorously. In every case, the non-Dove brands strip more color from the paper.

The Dial Corporation, another company in the body wash category, filed a complaint over the campaign with the National Advertising Division, the investigative arm of the ad industry’s voluntary self-regulation system, which operates under the aegis of the Better Business Bureau.

In a written decision released on June 19, investigators ruled that the advertising with barbed wire should be discontinued because “while consumers may not literally believe that body wash is as harsh on skin as barbed wire, such imagery nonetheless communicates an unsupported and disparaging message that competing products can seriously damage the skin.”

The investigation also concluded that Dove lacked evidence “to support its unqualified claim” that competing body washes were harsher, and to assert in advertising and packaging that it had “proven best care,” and should discontinue both practices.

The brand also should withdraw the online videos in which competing washes produced more visibly faded test paper because the demonstrations were neither “sufficiently reliable to demonstrate real-life surfactant damage” nor “accurately reflect how body wash is used in real life,” according to the ruling.

Unilever is appealing the decision to the National Advertising Review Board, which also is administered by the Better Business Bureau. A five-member panel representing advertisers, advertising agencies and the public sector, usually academics, will review the decision.

“We respect the self-regulatory process, but we believe in our methodology and the quality of our science, which is why we’re appealing the N.A.D. decision,” said Rob Candelino, a marketing vice president at Unilever, who declined to discuss specifics of the case while the appeal was pending. “We disagree with the assessment of the evidence and the way it was interpreted.”

The campaign is primarily by Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, owned by the WPP Group, with online videos by Evidently, an online content agency. It will continue to run online and offline while the decision is being appealed, Mr. Candelino said.

The Dial Corporation did not respond to a request for comment.

From 2010 through 2012, 19 of 339 decisions were appealed to the National Advertising Review Board, and none were overturned. The board upheld the decision 16 times (in one case ruling that the decision had not been critical enough) and in three cases upheld some aspects of the decision and overturned others.

“As an industry, we want people to believe that advertising is believable,” said Robin Hafitz, chief executive of Open Mind Strategy, a research company, who previously served on the National Advertising Review Board. She said that advertisers follow the precedents established by the rulings more closely than their advertising agencies, since it is the advertisers themselves that are held accountable.

“It resonates more within the businesses,” Ms. Hafitz said. “Agency work dies all the time because it’s not supported.”

David Vinjamuri, author of “Accidental Branding” and an adjunct professor of marketing at New York University, said that naming competitors in advertising was risky because consumers may perceive the advertiser as “meanspirited or petty.”

He added that barbed wire “is very troubling imagery for the category and very jarring to see in this context,” especially in light of the finding that Dove was not on firm footing to make the claims.

“It’s the kind of thing that even if you had all the evidence and you unequivocally knew it was true, you’d still hesitate to do it,” said Mr. Vinjamuri. “It’s like talking about a car’s safety in terms of showing deaths instead of showing healthy children.”

The Dove campaign singles out the Procter & Gamble brand Olay as being comparatively harsh.

Procter has traditionally not named competitors in ads, trumpeting brand benefits rather than “reacting to competitors,” wrote Laura Brinker, a company spokeswoman, in an e-mail message. Referring to the ruling against the campaign, Ms. Brinker wrote that Procter & Gamble was “pleased that N.A.D. has reviewed our competitor’s claims to help set the record straight.”

To the detriment of bar soap, the body wash category has been on the rise, growing 10 percent in the United States from 2010 to 2012, according to Mintel, a market research firm. Dove leads the category domestically, with a 13.2 share; followed by Bath & Body Works, from Limited Brands, with a 10.2 percent share; Suave, another Unilever brand, with a 7 percent share; and Dial, with a 6.9 percent share, according to year-end data for 2012 from Euromonitor International, a market research firm.

Dove spent $57.1 million on advertising in 2012, according to the Kantar Media unit of WPP. Dial spent $2.6 million.