Dove Cream oil - user generated ad on Oscar night and the youtube spawn

Slate calls it "more cheap feminism from Dove" and they're talking about the Cream Oil ad that debuted on Oscar night. Watch the cream oil ad here. It is yet another step in the "embracing real beauty campaign" where real women - or cartoons - take the place of airbrushed supermodels, shocking by being perfectly normal.

I still can't shake the feeling, though, that this reasonable impulse is a bit misguided. Dove's appeal to righteous sisterhood is just another flavor of marketing. And it's not particularly grounded in reality. Are we meant to believe that Unilever, the company that makes Dove, is a force for good? How to reconcile this notion with the ads for another Unilever product, Axe body spray, in which nearly every woman shown is a skinny, fashion-model-gorgeous nymphomaniac? (And by the way, Unilever also offers Slimfast, in case you're not quite as happy with your body as the Dove girls are.)

Well, yeah, duh. Of course it's just another marketing tactic - but as it zigs instead of sags (pun!) it sticks out, and dare I say even works well as the original campaign has quite a following.

Their consumer generated/user generated ads however, don't. The "Knowing You're Beautiful" commercial by Lindsay Miller, a 22-year-old TV production assistant coordinator of Sherman Oaks, California is basically the same old 'read the brief in an entertaining manner' concept seen shilling thousands of products every day. "Your skin has never felt like this!" she says, and perhaps not but we've heard that line before.

Miller said, " I've been intrigued by the recent trend in advertising of having mere mortals make commercials that end up on national television, so the contest caught my attention immediately.

I'm not sure, but Miller might be under the false impression that us adgrunts are some sort of Gods. I won't correct her if you won't. ;) The only place this ad "stuck out" was on youtube, where the community had a hissyfit about the ad for being an ad. An ad that asks the youtube community to make an ad.

Some reactions were against it, like this one.
by Vlogger oneparkave

Others actually made some sort of ad, like this little Psychedelic ditty. Stoner cream wash! ;)

And while we're in pharma-land, why didn't this guy win with his musical ad? Too much skin? ;)

The thing about user generated ads, is that you can't ask the users to stay on brief.