Dove Marketing Case Study

Case: Dove

1. What is a brand? Why does Unilever to want fewer of them?

Brand is a product, service or concept which distinguishes the identity of itself from other competitors in the eyes of Customers by using logo or a name etc. The Companies gives some message in a unified manner using those logos or names to all it’s customers.

Till February 2000, Unilever was having so many brands to cater to the market and was operating globally but in a decentralised manner like brand managers in individual geography were deciding on future path. Till such times, Unilever was managing about 1600 brands and some of them were marketed globally in different brand names at different parts of the globe like in ice cream segment, it was traded in the name of Walls in UK and Asia, Algida in Italy, Langnese in Germany etc. So Unilever found it difficult to manage the brand identity and decided to narrow down the total number of brands from 1600 to 400 for better control and improve brand identity in the market.

1. What was Dove’s market positioning in the 1950s? What is its positioning in 2007?

In the 1950’s Dove was positioning was it was just a soap but it would not dry the skin like other brands do. It was a cleansing cream and then slowly it was changed to soap with moisturizing benefit. This superiority market place was marketed for 40 years.

During 2007 Dove was the number one cleansing brand in the health and beauty sector with a sales of USD 2.5 Billion in more than 80 Countries World Wide. It was then competing with the brands like P&G’s Ivory, Kao’s Jergens and Beierdorf’s Nivea.

3.  How did Unilever organize to do product category management and brand management in Unilever before 2000? What was the corresponding structure after 2000? How was brand meaning controlled before 2000 and how is it controlled at the time of the case?

Prior to 2000, Unilever was having a Brand Manager in charge of a brand and entrusted with taking decisions for brand design, marketing strategy and profit delivery and daily marketing etc like a General Manager. A staff of brand assistants executed policies of brand manager. It so happened that different brands were also competing within themselves in the Organisation, besides competing with other firm’s brands.

Post 2000, Unilever divided responsibilities between two groups one for development of the brand and the other for building the brand in specific markets. Brand development was kept central with a global focus and brand building was decentralized for major geographies. Brand development was entrusted with the responsibility of developing the brand from behind and do innovations for future success. This team was made accountable for medium to long term marketing strategy for sustainability through use of conventional media and any new media. On the contrary brand building team were given the responsibility of short term marketing strategy like cash flow, market share and profitability in the region. Brand building group was consulting with brand development teams to decide which media to be used and how. The brand building team was reporting to General Manager for collection of brands and in turn reporting to Country Manager.