COMMENTARY
REPUTATIONS COMMENTARY
Read commentary from Reputations and its clients about business, reputation management and the public relations industry.
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DOVE REPUTATION SCARRED
Linda Bilben
The Dove beauty company has scarred its reputation after posting a casting call online for its “Real Beauty” campaign. The casting call, posted on Craigslist, asked for women to apply to appear in its print advertisements—but only women with “flawless skin,” “no tattoos or scars,” and that are curvy, but “not too curvy.”
As a Dove user, I share in the public outcry. However, while the average Dove consumer is learning that a beauty company they thought was aiming to revolutionize the beauty industry was actually the same as all the rest, my outcry is around poor execution of reputation management.
Clearly, someone missed the alignment of reputation in the organization. It appears that with the real beauty campaign (including the girl empowerment camps) that Dove’s Desired Reputation is as a company that promotes natural beauty for real, everyday women. Every point of contact Dove has with its stakeholders is an opportunity to bridge closer to its Desired Reputation—or in this case to create a wider gap. In the online world the scale and speed of this contact can scar entire companies in the click of a mouse.
If an organization checks every communication and operational decision against desired reputation it can be a "real beauty."