Criminal Sketch Artist Draws Women as They See Themselves and as Others See Them
adweek.com
adweek.com
This isn't a study. There's no academic rigor to apply. It is a commentary. It's a commentary that almost anyone who has either been a woman or been in a relationship with one can probably identify with or relate to.
And yes, it is advertising. I have no doubt that no one walked away from that video not realizing it was advertising. So what? Advertising isn't allowed to say something positive, or dare I say, honest?
What? Is it because they're a multinational and not a startup?
The video calls attention to the fact that women often focus on their flaws more than their positive features. If you find a lie in there somewhere, it's because you're judging it on the criteria of something it isn't trying to be, which says nothing about anyone or anything other than yourself.
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/newsweek_discovers_doomed...
I'd go further and say that everyone who has been a person can identify with. It's a human thing to notice things about yourself and think that people also notice it about you, because you know yourself better.
I realized years ago that I didn't look at faces as a sum of parts, when a friend I knew for more than a year told me his nose was too wide. I looked at it and realized that, indeed, it was a bit wide. I was stunned that I saw him every day for more than a year and had never noticed his nose.
It's not limited to the same sex. A girl I know had visibly crooked teeth, and at some point she had them fixed. When I saw her a few months later, I knew something was different, but I couldn't put my finger on it until someone mentioned it.
Or maybe I'm just super-unperceptive, I don't know.
Hang on. Dove is owned by Unilever, a company that also owns Axe body spray. What kind of ads does Axe run? Well, here's a few:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9tWZB7OUSU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpTGaENQNNg
In other words, they're selling the Barbie stereotype with their left hand & selling the anti-Barbie stereotype with their right.
I think it's perfectly acceptable to call bullshit on a company that does both.
Back when I first became involved in pitching major brands, I learned very quickly that different groups within any sufficiently large organization can have vastly different values, principles, and priorities. And, most importantly for me at that time, different budgets.
It's brilliant because it is framed as if this is some kind of informal experiment, which is all that is needed to tap into the insecurities of women that have self-esteem issues. Even rational women will be affected by this (just as rational men would be should it be targeted at men).
The brilliant thing about this advert is that it captures the audience with intrigue, and then breaks down the "facts" while at the same time telling women to really feel more beautiful than they think they are. What this does is it gets buy-in from the audience so that when the advert proposes soap and cleanliness to further the idea of beauty.
In one study[0] about persuasion, it was found that when you try to advertise or sell a product, making statements or representing a world view that the audience can agree with first will make them more likely to agree with you when you then pitch them the product.
As for the "honesty" of this, a real study is posted elsewhere in this thread that points to the contrary.
[0] http://www.rotman.utoronto.ca/facbios/file/10-0352%20The%20R...
The artist knows perfectly well what the intention is, and which group is which.
ALSO, the results are going to be skewed by standard rules of politeness -- even given a person with a perfectly balanced view of themselves, the way they describe themselves to a stranger surely should avoid being too praising (or they'd seem narcissistic), whereas someone else's description of them would be skewed to the positive side, also out of politeness -- who knows if the person being drawn is going to hear this description later, or is a friend of the artist, etc.?
It would be easy to do this better.
Imagine if this were (seemingly) a study about the value and accuracy of police sketches. Use multiple sketch artists, and let them know their sketches are going to be tested by IDing from a large lineup.
Some sources will be self-describing (i.e., someone very familiar with the face) and others will be someone with only a short encounter with the subject.
This is a plausible (fake) study, and the remaining problems (with the real intent) are much, much fewer.
A counter to your point about politeness skewing the results is that the women who were shown the sketches of themselves afterwards clearly seemed to react in such a way that indicated that they realized they were too harsh on themselves, that they had negative views of their appearance which was unjustified, and that they were relieved/flattered to see how strangers saw them. So, it's not a proof of anything, but I'm just pointing out that womens' description of themselves seemed to be pretty reflective of how they genuinely viewed themselves.
That's why I was so frustrated that they just went with the publicity stunt when this could have been real. it would have been a bit harder to spin into a slick documentary, but it would have been much more valuable.
The interesting thing about this campaign is that it shows how strangers are far more complimentary about how people look than those people would be about themselves. We know our own perceived flaws far better than anybody else does; in our culture of image obsession, it is far too easy to assume that every person in the world is judging you for every little imperfection on your face and of your body.
There have absolutely been experiments conducted about people's self-perceptions as compared to others' perceptions of them. This is nothing new. But it's far more interesting to look at than your average psychological study, and since it's not saying anything especially groundbreaking – does anybody really think strangers would be more critical of a woman than that woman would be of herself? – "interesting to look at" is what matters.
No, it asserts that. It does not show it. To show it would require a valid methodology.
When I step back from a mirror (or don't wear my contacts), I think I look good. but up close I see patchy hair, blemishes, color variation, etc...
It's just an interesting visual way to tell a story about body awareness. And of course, the whole point is to reinforce the Dove marketing approach, which is still a lot more healthy and wholesome than the typical cosmetic pitch (i.e. you're not beautiful unless you look like a skinny white photoshopped supermodel)
They make money selling nice versions of very simple gunk. I haven't checked, but I hope they're not doing the science-BS of "skin tightening" or "lip-plumping" that other brands do.
I'm sorry, but that's just uninformed bullshit http://www.adverbox.com/ads/dove/
No, they don't show people with severe skin issues but really, that's a little unreasonable for a company selling skin care products.
" I haven't checked, but ..."
Ahem
My thought was that we, as individuals, don't really know what we look like. Sure we see ourselves in the mirror but how much detail do we see?
I see my wife all the time and could probably have a pretty accurate sketch drawn of her but if I had one drawn of me it would be pretty far off.
It's masterful, but it's more of the same. Just more subtly.
Genuine, deep emotion used to make an association with a product.
And the emotional experience is real, regardless of the marketing.
This will be a super-successful ad, way beyond their work on this campaign so far.
She was one of those nordic women with big bones, literally, when she was a model you could see easily several of her bones and she was more or less masculine.
When I dated her, she was overweight by her standards (but had a perfectly normal weight actually, she was underweight when she was a model), this made her "bonyness" get bit hidden and her body got natural feminine curves, also her face was very beautiful (you ever saw a ugly model?).
Yet, I remember how odd to me it sounded when she wanted to have sex with me (I was not much sure about it, I was virgin) but with lights off. I was like: "Alright, you want to convince me to have sex, but with lights off?" Then she claimed that she was too fat and bony and she looked like a transexual...
I was kinda shocked... But over time this did not really go away, it would not matter how much I would reassure her, or how much other men looked at me with obvious envy, or how beautiful she really was, she always for one reason or another thought herself ugly. This is one of the reasons the relationship fell apart... But I never forget it, I dated a woman that was rich, powerful and a model, but she kept thinking herself weak and ugly (specially, fat with protuding bones... So yes, there are people that would describe themselves like that)
I imagine that being a model put your self-esteem under a huge presure.
Movie stars, rock stars/dancers, very attractive. Models, not really.
This is why when I dated her, she was a former model, and "overweight" (by her standards).
If she was still a model, I would pass... I am not into stick bags.
Not every model is a skeleton wearing over-stylized clothes on a runway.
In fact, this might blow your mind: the majority of models aren't that.
"Oh my nose is slightly large," "my lips are too thin," "my face is too bony," "I'm too fat," etc etc. Anything not to rock the boat of your self image.
Both Dove and Axe are Unilever brands; they just target different seems of the population with messages that they know will resonate. It's great marketing, not social good.
Axe: Get bitches
Dove: Because bitches deserve to be got.
To keep it short:
I send my parents to a professional photofit guy from our national police (he never saw me, nor knows me, nor has seen a pic etc.) and made my parents describe me to him.
It's a work about identity, how the people that are very close to you see you and ofc the obvious link photofits have with the medium newspaper.
I removed it from my webpage (www.medium.lu) as i keep only a selection online so i exported a .pdf for u if anyone cares to check it out: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25637921/hn/identified.p...
Cheers