In one of the first classes of CMN 2173 this summer, Dr. Strangelove told us that Dove and Axe are owned by the same company, Unilever. What is funny about this is that Dove has been promoting “real beauty” and self-esteem in women by not using anorexic supermodels in all of their advertisements. However, Axe ads do the complete opposite. They are sexist, they objectify women, and they make extensive use of young and impossibly thin models.
One of these Dove commercials features a young girl being hit with all kinds of messages about what she should be like when she grows up (sexy, skinny, plastic). At the end of the ad parents are advised to talk to their daughters “before the beauty industry does.”
There are three videos in this post. The first is the original Dove commercial, called “Onslaught.” The second video is an amateur culture jam, that shows the irony of Unilever telling parents to keep their kids away from the beauty industry, even though they promote sexism through their Axe ads. The final ad is a professional culture jam done by Greenpeace, pointing out Dove’s hypocrisy from an ecological, rather than ideological point of view. The two subvertisements use the same song and same style of filming, making them highly effective.
The original:
The amateur culture jam:
The Greenpeace culture jam, called “Onslaught(er)”:
The second video is another example of the power YouTube gives to culture jammers. The third is an example of larger organizations taking advantage of YouTube’s massive audience. Both will be helpful for our project in showing the importance of YouTube in subvertising.
