One month ago Clean & Clear debuted a great “Acceptance Speeches” commercial during the MTV VMAs that featured “real” girls vs. cast actors delivering heartfelt declarations of what they accept and like about themselves. Yesterday, Dove released its latest Real Beauty campaign video, which features girls (“real” or actors? we’re not sure) talking about the one thing they’d like to change about their looks.
At their core, both spots are tackling the same subject – girls’ self-esteem – but come at it from two very different angles… positive talk (Clean & Clear), negative talk (Dove).
We get the point that Dove is trying to make, which is based on their research that showed “90% of girls would like to change one thing about themselves.” We also appreciate that this latest video is connected to a new program on Pinterest that, according to AdWeek, “includes 80 ‘shareable resources’ to help women address girls’ biggest barriers to self-esteem, developed with Dove’s global advisory board of educators.”
But with one of the biggest barriers to self-esteem being negative self-talk, why fill an entire minute with girls doing just that Dove?
None of us (girls included) need to be reminded that there are things – whether one or many – we’d probably like to change about ourselves, thanks, in large part, to unrealistic beauty brand messaging (oh, the irony). What we DO need to be reminded of is to embrace our differences, celebrate our uniqueness, and love ourselves… and Clean & Clear did a bang up job of that, in our WYSKy opinion.