Dove's Might Have a Home Run with "Meet Cathleen"

Dove has another potential success story this week with the release of a new 30 second commercial and online video called "Meet Cathleen".   This latest campaign is part of a collaboration with Shonda Rhimes who produced the commercial and video.  This is a continuation of Dove's successful Campaign for Real Beauty that began in 2004 and has continued with related campaigns over the past 13 years. All of the campaign's iterations have continued with the core focus on promoting natural beauty and celebrating diversity in woman and girls.

The "Meet Cathleen" commercial, which debuted during Shonda's season finales of both Grey's Anatomy and Scandal, and the online video focus on Cathleen Meredith, who started the group "Fat Girls Dance" which promotes weekly dance videos via different social media outlets.  The partnership with Shonda seems like a natural fit for Dove and their Real Beauty campaign.  She has made an extremely successful career showcasing women in her television shows from different backgrounds and ethnicities.  Dove has had previous successes with their online videos and content for its Campaign for Real Beauty, its most viewed video being that of the "Real Beauty Sketches" from 2013 which was downloaded 15 million times in its first week.

While all the data for the newest campaign has not been made public yet, "Meet Catherine" has pulled in 1.5 million YouTube views since it was posted 2 days ago.  I think that this will be a very fruitful collaboration that will help the  Dove Real Beauty campaign.   Their most recent venture prior to this was an attempt to offer Dove's body wash bottles in different shapes to symbolize women's body types has had mixed reactions.  Related articles on the new "Meet Cathleen" campaign and the Dove Body Wash bottles are below.


http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/shonda-rhimes-dove-work-feel-commercial/309084/

http://creativity-online.com/work/dove-meet-cathleen/51831

http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/dove-is-touting-its-new-partnership-with-shonda-rhimes-during-abcs-tgit-tonight/

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/01/21/dove-real-beauty-campaign-turns-10_n_4575940.html

http://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/dove-s-recent-real-beauty-failure-win/309069/

https://www.fastcompany.com/40419119/dove-matches-its-new-body-wash-bottles-to-your-body-type