THE BRAND HISTORY OF "DOVE"

 A brand is how a company distinguishes itself and its products from others in the market, be it by the means of a logo, a symbol or a tag line. Brand history refers to the journey of a brand so far, journey of its growth or downfall, in the terms of its products, section of customers, places where it provide its services and so on. Let us now dive deeper into the brand history of DOVE.

Dove was founded by Lever brothers in 1957. One of its rare own kinds, dove has gained massive popularity in the market of body care products. Having started from producing soap bars of which they are still the largest producers till date, they have now expanded to an entire arena of personal care products, ranging from body washes, to shampoos and conditioners, to deodrants, the list is endless. There are chances that any body care product that a customer looks for, can find one under the name of “Dove”. The brand doesn’t make gender or age specific products- they offer personal care for the entire family: Males, females and Kids as well.  What made dove stand out from the already existing toiletry brands was this one major element, moisture. It made sure that unlike the other soaps in the market, dove soaps didn’t make the human skin dry after application and rather moisturised it.

Apart from promising high quality products to its customers, what gained popularity for dove as a brand was the campaign they launched in the year 2004: Real Beauty Campaign. It promoted the idea of Natural Body. For its advertisements, dove started choosing women and not models. It was one of the first of its kind to promote body positivity and acceptance of one’s natural skin tones and body types. The youth which was influenced greatly by social media, and who was always in a race to look “perfect”, was now getting to see changes due to this campaign.. People started accepting that everything on social media is not real, and how the term “perfect” doesn’t exist. Whether it was a marketing strategy by dove, or a social step towards the society, what matters is that due to this campaign, it has made easier for people to differentiate the dove brand easier to recognize in the market.

The Dove logo : The dove’s logo from the very initial stage, focussed on depicting tenderness and elegance. The very first logo of dove was featured on its soaps, was extremely simple, it presented a background of blue with a white cursive lettering of the brand’s name. The upper right corner of the logo is covered in gold and the gold portion contained Dove’s iconic emblem : the namesake bird.