The Multiple Faces Of Unilever

A rhetorical analysis comparing Unilever’s two most successful

campaigns-- Dove and Axe

Unilever owns many food, personal care, and home care brands. It’s two of Unilever’s personal care brands that have put the company in a very controversial situation.

Dove is running the Dove Beauty Campaign, and Axe is running the Keep Your Balls Clean Campaign

Does Unilever actually care about individual’s beauty and self worth if they can run both Dove and Axe side by side?

Axe VS Dove

Dove Beauty’s IntentionsCreated back in 2004 by Unilever

Idea: Embodying an individual’s physical variations as well as getting everyone to be comfortable in their own skin through products, advertisements, and workshops

By purchasing dove products, each purchase donates part of that money to the young women’s self esteem workshops and programs

Imagine a world where beauty is a source of

confidence, not anxiety.

Young women all over the world struggle with the growing problem that they do not believe they are beautiful and lack in self confidence.

The Social Judgment Theory applies here: Dove is trying to adjust girls’ anchors previously conceived by the media, and by giving them several different options within their latitude of acceptance, girls and women can more readily accept that they are beautiful. Dove wants to reach over 5 million girls around the world using their rhetoric in changing the face of beauty.

Axe Keep Your Balls Clean Intentions

Axe runs provocative photographs, commercials, and advertisements for the purpose of promoting sexual relationship that are achievable through using these products.

Idea: manly, totally irresistible, staying alert, and getting some ‘action’ In this

campaign, the word beauty is defined in an entirely new light. Beauty comes from larger breasts, near naked women, and sex.

The Axe product running the “Keep Your Balls Clean” Campaign has run a wild twist on how to sell products to males as well as promote an exotic form of confidence in life .

The Marxist Theory (the one with the gold makes the rules) applies here as Axe is the one with the money, so they make the rules. Their money put these vulgar ads into our lives. They also promoted the idea that the axe personal care products can get you a girlfriend.

Controversy?The messages that Dove and Axe promote contradict each other so much that the ethics and morals of the company Unilever must be questioned.

Video: Speak to your children before Unilever does.

Dove focuses on natural beauty and Axe focusing on the sexual advances of women, Unilever has crippled itself.

How’d they get so successful?

How their rhetoric made them successfulAxe’s use of Aristotle’s

Proofs

Pathos: Campaign about sparking interest in men that want to increase the ‘action’ in their lives.

Logos: Axe has been around for 10 years, and is very recognized.

Ethos: Causes concern, its demeaning but “men and women get it (the joke)” [to be or not to be]

Dove’s Use of Aristotle’s Proofs

Pathos: Connect emotionally with all young girls so they can feel beautiful again

Ethos: It’s about individual beauty, is highly versatile, and stable.

Logos: Unilever is a successful co. and with how much money this campaign has brought in, people trust them

The Success of Axe and DoveEach campaign has reached heights that were

never dreamed of by Unilever.

They increase the sales in the personal care products section of Unilever by over 29%.

Their competition with each other created even more sales and increased recognition.

Unilever stands behind each of them, recognizes that they are individual companies, and though they created controversy, they only intend to continued to expand in sales and advertising

campaigns.

So

Do

You

Choose

Axe?

Or

Do

You

Choose

Dove?