The company behind brands, including Dove Soap and Sure Deodorant, will ban excessive photo shopping of models and remove the word ‘normal’ from beauty product ads, in its latest response to social and environmental issues.
Unilever said it would remove “all digital changes to body shape, size, proportion and skin color” from the ad. The Photoshop ban will cover Unilever ads as well as influencers paid by the company to promote products.
The removal of the word ‘normal’ from the packaging will affect at least 200 products and will be completed within a year, criticizing corporate perceptions of norms can be exclusive, especially if demographic group is considered.
The FTSE 100 consumer products company said it also aims to “use more natural, biodegradable and regenerative ingredients in our product portfolio”.
Unilever seeks to position itself as an ethical brand in its extensive product portfolio, ranging from Sunsilk shampoo to Domestos bleach and Marmite distribution. It has set a scientific goal to produce net carbon emissions by 2039 and set out ambitions to reduce the amount of plastic used in packaging.
Sunny Jain, Unilever’s president for beauty and personal care products, said consumers are rewarding brands that are increasingly acting on environmental and social issues. He said the personal beauty campaign will make the business more successful.
The company has also promised to expand its activist marketing by ‘taking a stand on the issues we know consumers are paying attention to and communicating it to consumers’.
Unilever’s ice cream brand Ben & Jerry’s has taken on social issues as part of its marketing. Last summer, Ben & Jerry’s criticized the British government’s policy on refugees crossing the Channel, angering senior Conservative party politicians, and voicing support for protest marches against Black Lives Matter. In January, the company said it would launch the Crown Fund UK, an initiative aimed at stopping discrimination around black hairstyles.
Unilever’s beauty and grooming department is one of the largest advertisers in the world and spends between $ 4 billion and $ 5 billion annually. In January, he promised to tackle advertising stereotypes and increase spending on businesses run by women or under-represented groups from € 300 million to € 2 billion a year.
However, it has been criticized for its role in perpetuating harmful perceptions about beauty. Last year, he renamed a skin lightening cream sold in India from “Fair and Lovely” to “Glow and Lovely”, but it continues to sell it despite allegations that its existence spreads discriminatory attitudes. “The product has never been a skin bleaching cream,” Unilever claims on its website.
The move to ban unrealistic photo editing comes eight years after some of Unilever’s brands highlighted the issue. In 2013, Dove soapie launched an advertising campaign that encouraged designers not to ‘manipulate our perceptions of true beauty’. It also created a spoof photo-editing tool that promised to “beautify” images, but in fact put images back in their unedited state.
In 2016, Unilever announced a shift in brands such as Lynx, a deodorant brand in most markets outside the UK known as Ax, away from ads that relied on stereotypes that were frequently criticized as misogyny.
Jain said the company “is committed to tackling harmful norms and stereotypes and forming a broader, much more inclusive definition of beauty”.
“We know that removing ‘normal’ from our products and packaging alone will not solve the problem, but it is an important step forward,” he said.