I believe that a lot of you are familiar with this scandal, but I believe that is a very good example of a bad and inappropriate social post by a big company. In October of 2017, Dove released a three-second ad on their U.S. Facebook page that features three women of different ethnicities. The ad was about a woman taking off her shirt to reveal another underneath. The video showed three women individually lifting their shirts and shifting from one to another. A dark-skinned woman pulled up her brown shirt to reveal a white woman in a cream shirt, who then unveiled an Asian woman in a tan tee. By transformation from black to white women reminded people of a beauty advertisement history when racist messages were transferred suggesting that “dirty” people of color could be purified to white with soap. Dove’s message was that their products were for every skin tone, which is one of their missions-to support diversity. However, the message received by the public was different. After screenshots were posted to Twitter of a black woman turning into a white woman, the public’s reaction was disgust and the audience was not happy about the ad. They accused Dove of racism and calling for a boycott. Due to a slow reaction, distrust grew between Dove and its publics, and they have continued to try and rebuild their trust and their image to this day. Even before this scandal, Dove had struggled with a lot of racially-based issues in their ads. In 2011 there was an ad showing dark African American women before and White after. One mistake was acceptable, however, in 2014 Dove’s product was labeled for “normal to dark skin” which causes even more issues since that was the second ad that offended African Americans. In my opinion, this was a post that should have never been posted on social media. For a company big like this it is not acceptable to make a mistake like this. Especially not after the bad history of racially-based issues in their ads. Their troubled history and lack of an appropriate response following this controversy show that the company doesn’t anticipate a crisis before it comes. Dove should have put a team in place to monitor their communications after the first scandal. One of the most important strategies in the public relations industry is the communication between the organization and the organization needs to listen to its stakeholders. Dove failed to incorporate the feedback from its stakeholder groups after the 2011 and 2014 advertisement scandals and that is why another issue came up. Dove did not even apologize appropriately, and they technically accused the audience of being offended. In the world of social media, they had a good chance to communicate with the public in a good way, but they failed in this as well. It is a perfect example of Insincere, “sorry you’re offended” approach which is not helpfull during the crisis. Moreover, if you decide to post an ad like that writes a good description of it that will justify your point. They should have write their values and connected them to the ad. Dove did not write an appropriate caption about the ad and completely unused social media outlets in order to have a successful social media post that will reach the target audience.
Lack of transparency and authenticity within Dove’s actions impacted its perception among audiences and it broken trust. I would love to hear your opinion on this and also read some of your examples about an innapropriate social media posts. Social media is a big part of our lives and everyone should be aware of that when posting. After it goes viral, there is no coming back. I hope that you enjoyed my post! Until next time you can enjoy in this two interesting videos about this ad and learn more about it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_F29AJYzkQhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zkIrbVycAeM
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