Kenneth Burke's Guilt Redemption Cycle in Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty"

In 2004, large, wrinkled, and small-breasted women took center stage in a line of beauty advertisements. In 2005, they were taking that stage in their underwear for Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty.” To call it a new marketing scheme would be an understatement; to call it an effort to show a revolution in beauty advertising would be more fitting. Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” is a dramatization of transcendence from an existing reality in beauty marketing to a new reality, a presumably better reality, and one in which Dove is the narrator.

In addition to the conventional forms of television, magazines, and outdoor advertising, Dove’s campaign includes interactive, philanthropic, and even border-line philosophic components. The hub of this activity is the “Campaign for Real Beauty” website which features a forum for women’s issues. Other parts of the campaign include fundraising with the Dove Self-Esteem Fund, academic research with “The Real Truth about Beauty: A Global Report,” self-esteem workshops for young girls, a touring photography exhibit, and the establishment of the Program for Aesthetics and Well-Being at Harvard. The most well-known part of the campaign, however, is the advertisements that feature ‘real’ women with different shapes, sizes, and imperfections.

Dove’s advertisements have received a lot of buzz in both mainstream and trade publications. In 2005, Dove’s campaign took home the International Advertiser of the Year award for its parent company, Unilever (“Dove”, 2005). After running a Super Bowl commercial in 2006 featuring young girls as victims of a negative self-image, Dove “won the [viewer] write-in vote by a landslide” on AdAge.com for its commercial (“What you say:…”, 2006). As for the product, Dove experienced an initial surge in sales with an increase of 163 percent over the first month of the campaign (“Dove”, 2005). By the end of 2005, Dove’s sales were up 15% overall (Wasserman, 2005).

Why was Dove’s campaign so successful? True, their advertisements were often found “striking” which can help to explain its popularity, but merely shocking consumers does not account for the surge in its sales (Stevenson, 2005). The most recognizable and eye-catching part of the campaign is its advertisements featuring ‘real’ women which are meant to grab attention. Beyond these advertisements is the rest of the campaign: the support groups, researchers, and fundraising, all working together to create a story for consumers. To help explain its success, the story told in Dove’s campaign can be examined in light of Kenneth Burke’s concept of the guilt-redemption cycle.

Kenneth Burke’s concept of the guilt-redemption cycle comes out of his understanding of the effectiveness of religious cosmogonies. Burke found that the narratives found in religion were successful for motivating followers and often followed a pattern of order, pollution of the order, casuistic stretching, guilt, victimage, and transcendence to a new order. This pattern of story telling can be found in Dove’s campaign.

“When all is as it should be, we are comfortable with our world, and we are in touch with the sources of our being” (Durbin, 2006). This is order. In Dove’s narrative, order is women accepting their looks and having a positive self-esteem. This is how the world should be, and when it is, only then can women truly be comfortable, according to Dove.

However, something is “found wanting” in this order, and this is pollution (Durbin, 2006). In Dove’s narrative, the marketing of beauty products is a polluted order; in particular, the effects of advertisements on the self-esteem and well being of women. This is a key point in Dove’s campaign. When our world is in order, women feel good about their selves and celebrate their individuality. However, this is not the case in our world where women have negative self images. Thus, this order is polluted.

In its 2006 Super Bowl commercial, Dove told the story of this pollution. The commercial showed young girls with captions such as, “thinks she’s ugly” and “afraid she’s fat.” Dove demonstrates this pollution by the creation of an image of a corrupted world for the self-esteem of women at the hands of a narrow definition of beauty. Ironically, behind this pollution are the mass media and the advertising industry who has contributed to the “stereotypical views and standards of beauty” that pollute the order (Ectoff, 2004). While the cause of the pollution is explicitly stated in Dove’s writings that reach a smaller audience, the message is still received by the larger audience. In responses in Dove’s chat room to their Super Bowl commercial, viewers often commented that they were glad that Dove was dealing with the “effects of…media” on “self-esteem issues” (jaena, 2006). Even though there was no mention of the media as the source of the pollution, viewers were still able to draw out that message.

At this point, Dove is saying that this pollution can no longer exist in our order. According to Burke’s concept of the guilt-redemption cycle, there is a limit on how much pollution can be in our order. In order to deal with the pollution, Burke suggests that we take part in casuistic stretching which “attempts to stretch the old order to encompass the new perspective” (Durbin, 2006). In Dove’s narrative, we have previously accepted the definition of beauty created in the media; however, as this definition has progressively narrowed to a set of “limited ideals,” it has become removed from our frame of acceptance (Ectoff, 2004). Along the way, women have stretched their frame of acceptance to encompass this changing definition of beauty, however, like a rubber-band, this frame of acceptance has been stretched too far and, according to Dove’s narrative, this narrow definition of beauty has become unacceptable and is polluting our order.

As a result, there is “a sense of…corporate guilt over the pollution of our order” (Durbin, 2006). According to Dove’s narrative, this guilt is what their “Campaign for Real Beauty” is responding to. In the conclusion of its study, Dove claims that it is the “obligation of…the mass media” to “faithfully represent [beauty] in the ways in which they speak about it” (Ectoff, 2004). This guilt operates as a key motivator in moving on through the guilt-redemption cycle. For Burke, humans have an innate need to be perfect. Guilt occurs when we realize that we are not perfect because there is pollution in our order. Therefore, guilt is not acceptable and must be dealt with.

According to Burke’s guilt-redemption cycle, guilt must be atoned for by “placing it on a party and symbolically killing that party” (Durbin, 2006). This is done through scape-goating (placing the guilt on others) and mortification (placing the guilt on oneself). In Dove’s narrative, the guilt is atoned for by placing it on themselves and taking part in mortification. Though they do not explicitly claim to be responsible for the pollution in the order, they are responsible by their inclusion in the beauty industry. According to Dove’s narrative, they are the first to step up and accept the blame, atoning for the guilt, and are therefore the first to propose a new order and move forward. This allows them to avoid the sense of hypocrisy of a polluter criticizing other polluters because, even though they belong to the larger group of polluters (the beauty industry), they are no longer themselves polluting. Dove symbolically kills the old ways of advertising and the old definition of beauty with their new advertisements full of ‘real’ women. This provides Dove with a sense of trustworthiness and allows them to create and control the new order that they propose we transcend to.

In Burke’s concept of the guilt-redemption cycle, transcendence is the process of redemption by which we move from our “old order and rise to a new order” (Durbin, 2006). In Dove’s narrative, their ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’ is motivating us to transcend form our old order. The new order that they propose is one in which the media portrays a broad definition of beauty. In this new order, women will have better self-esteems. We will accept this as our new order because it resembles our previous order before it became polluted. The stage of transcendence is important in this story because Dove makes us feel included in the transcendence to a new order.

This inclusion is achieved by the symbols that Dove uses in its campaign. Some of Dove’s earlier advertisements featuring ‘real’ women placed check-mark boxes beside their pictures with options such as “oversized” or “outstanding.” This strategy capitalized on the symbolic meanings of the images involved. The ‘real’ woman in the advertisement symbolizes a break in the traditional choice of models (i.e. the new order). The option of ‘oversized’ symbolizes the types of classification that the pictured woman receives in accordance to the rhetoric of the old order. The option of ‘outstanding’ symbolizes the new classification proposed for the woman using the rhetoric of the new order. The check-mark boxes symbolize democracy by its connotations to voting for which order we prefer to live in. The voting symbolizes the ideal process for change by American standards. The advertisement appeals to our notions of guilt and empathy for the model, and we are guided towards voting for the new order and made to feel a part of the transcendent process. The relationship between this transcendence to a new order and the democratic process in Dove’s narrative is underlined by their labeling of their efforts as a campaign.

Dove’s choice in names in their campaign is a part of their process in which their narrative seeks to provide us with a new order in which we identify with Dove’s point of view. Burke would describe this as identifying with Dove’s frames of acceptance and rejection. For Burke, each word choice encompasses different beliefs and perceptions. Therefore, Dove’s entire campaign is meant to help us to identify with their frame of acceptance. Dove has made a drama out of the definition of beauty in the media through the guilt-redemption cycle. The new order proposed by Dove is consistent with their frame of acceptance. Once we have gone through the guilt-redemption cycle and begin to identify with Dove’s frame of acceptance, then Dove has succeeded in gaining the ability to motivate us.

But what is Dove trying to motivate us to do? According to their narrative, they are trying to recruit us in a campaign to broaden the definition of beauty. However, this is the motivation according to the story that Dove tells us. At its heart, Dove’s campaign is still advertising. While the old way of beauty advertising was to tell women that they needed to buy a beauty product in order to be beautiful, Dove’s message in the new order is that women already are beautiful. This only begs the question of why we should continue to use Dove’s products.

One interpretation is that Dove’s products are not claiming to make you more beautiful and are simply necessities; they are the brand that women who know that they are already beautiful buy. In a comment in Dove’s chat-room, one user proclaimed, “I will definitely buy more Dove products just because they obviously care about the real me” (Empress, 2006). Another interpretation is that by buying any other brand, you are condoning the pollution that Dove has identified in the old order, and to support the new order, you must therefore buy Dove. In another chat-room posting, one user hypothesized that “If everyone began to support Dove…by buying their products, other companies will begin…to [advertise] by using REAL people and…that will help women…to believe that they are beautiful” (Amy, 2006). These users have adopted the frame of acceptance for their world provided by Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty.”

The views portrayed by these users underscore the values that Dove’s campaign has purveyed. In addition to the democratic values discussed earlier, Dove’s campaign purveys the value of social responsibility. Therefore, using Dove signifies that you also uphold these values, and in Dove’s narrative, this makes you socially responsible and actively engaged in a democratic process of change. Because we accept the ideals purveyed by Dove, we accept their dramatization of the guilt-redemption cycle as true.

On the surface, Dove’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” seems to be a revolutionary new form of advertising. The idea of condemning beauty industry advertisements with more beauty industry advertisements seems illogical. However, in light of Kenneth Burke’s guilt-redemption cycle, we are able to see why Dove’s campaign is an effective form of motivation. With this in mind, Dove’s campaign seems less revolutionary as an advertising campaign and more conventional as a piece of rhetoric that adheres well to the processes in Kenneth Burke’s guilt-redemption cycle.

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Bibliography

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