Posted on Mar 11, 2013

The Value of Beauty in Marketing

The value of beauty means the qualities that give pleasure to the senses; that which is attractive.

Marketing Questions:

What is the most attractive attribute of your product or service?
Are designers engaged at the beginning, middle or end of your product development cycle?
If you could hire anyone – a famous actor, politician, family member, etc. – to represent your brand, who would you select? Why?
Which one of the senses does your brand engage the most? How?

The Balance of Beauty

Marketers have always known that sex sells. For many years now, it has worked extremely well for the Victoria Secret brand. It also works for GoDaddy.com with their rather risqué ads.

And it’s not just scantly dressed women that sell. It also works with men. Just consider the cult-like following of towel-clad Isaiah Mustafa in the series of Old Spice videos. Why? The simple fact is that beautiful people grab consumer attention.

But one marketer – Dove – successfully turned the value of beauty around. They highlighted what’s attractive in all women, and made marketers the villain.

When Dove launched their Campaign for Real Beauty in 2004, their goal was to celebrate the natural beauty of women, and ultimately encourage confidence in women by feeling comfortable with themselves. In 2006 they launched Dove evolution showing how marketers manipulate natural beauty into perceived beauty.

This campaign eventually morphed into the Dove Movement for Self-Esteem. In 2011, Dove released the findings of a large global study on women’s relationship to beauty. It showed that only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful. Clearly the value of beauty is still significantly distorted by stereotypical archetypes.

But therein lies the opportunity.

Marketers that discover how to leverage beauty as a differentiating value while helping raise individual self-esteem will be creating long-term competitive advantage. Now, that’s an attractive combination!