Greenpeace UK has called out Dove and its parent company Unilever in a campaign subverting the beauty brand’s “Toxic influence” film.
The short film takes the same format as the 2022 Dove campaign by Ogilvy by showing mothers and daughters in conversation.
Shot in a documentary-style, the film opens with the women discussing their positive reactions to Dove’s marketing, as they view different ad campaigns and social media posts – pointing out the brand’s progressive representation of women.
The release coincides with the 20th anniversary of Dove’s “Real beauty” campaign, which launched in September 2004.
Greenpeace says this campaign positioned the brand as “one with a social and environmental ‘purpose’”.
The theme of the Greenpeace spot then shifts to discuss plastic waste and aims to expose the “hypocrisy of the mega-brand” by getting people to talk about its contributions to plastic pollution.
The participants are shown clips of how plastic pollution is having an impact on women around the world, prompting them to discuss how brands are contributing to the environmental crisis.
It was directed by Alice Russell, produced by Anna Wells at Wasteminster and shot by Sarah Cunningham.
The film will launch across Greenpeace UK’s YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram and TikTok accounts.
The campaign comes a week after Greenpeace activists shut down the entrances to Unilever’s HQ in Central London on 5 September, locking themselves onto barricades made to look like giant Dove products.
Climbers unfurled a giant banner across the building bearing the message “Real beauty isn’t this toxic”, calling on Dove to ditch plastic.
According to Greenpeace’s International report, released late last year, Unilever sells the equivalent of 1700 plastic sachets per second. An estimated 6.4 billion sachets were produced by Dove in 2022, making up more than 10% of Unilever’s total sachet sales.
A field investigation by Greenpeace South East Asia and Greenpeace UK also revealed images of Dove’s sachet waste polluting beaches and waterways in the Philippines and Indonesia.
The latest campaign calls on Dove and Unilever to phase-out single-use plastic and transition to reusable in the next 10 years, starting with plastic sachets.
Greenpeace is also asking the company to advocate for this same level of ambition at the next round of negotiations on a UN Global Plastics Treaty when it attends as co-chair of the Business Coalition in November.
Anna Diski, campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said: “This powerful film shows the genuine human reaction to the hypocrisy which seeps through Dove and its slick marketing. It’s a reaction which should worry the brand – the women and girls they claim to champion won’t put up with it and want Dove to change.
“They know there’s no 'Real beauty' in the real harm caused by Dove’s plastic pollution. They can’t keep flooding the world with unimaginable amounts of harmful plastic. That’s why Dove must stop selling plastic sachets now and commit to phasing out single-use plastic within a decade.”
Campaign has contacted Unilever and Ogilvy for comment.
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