Critical Discourse Analysis of Dove's Campaign for Real Beauty Advertisement

Seminar paper from the year 2019 in the subject Communications - Public Relations, Advertising, Marketing, Social Media, grade: 1,7, Justus-Liebig-University Giessen, language: English, abstract: The purpose of this paper is to explore how Dove experienced the corporate social responsibility paradox, which occurs when a CSR campaign hurts the brand's reputation instead of benefiting it. Dove communicates its corporate social responsibility activities, as part of its marketing strategy, through social media, which caused in some cases criticism and backlash towards the brand. Even though the message from Dove, that everyone is beautiful in their own way, was perceived positively, the way it was being advertised and represented also caused negative consumer responses toward Dove. The advertisement that was criticized and is the object of investigation in this paper, is the body-shaped bottle advertisement, that was published as part of Dove's Real Beauty Campaign. The analysis of the advertisement will be conducted according to Fairclough's (1989, 1995) model for critical discourse analysis. The aim of the Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) is to explore the visuals, ideology and stereotypes behind the advertisement, what the reason for the negative responses could be, the role of social media in this context and the resulting consequences for Dove.