
Criminal Sketch Artist Draws Women as They See Themselves and as Others See Them - dmor
http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/dove-hires-criminal-sketch-artist-draw-women-they-see-themselves-and-others-see-them-148613
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nateabele
_Seriously!?_ We can't stop being cynical, hyper-analytical computer nerds for
_5 minutes_?

This isn't a study. There's no academic rigor to apply. It is a commentary.
It's a commentary that almost anyone who has either been a woman or been in a
relationship with one can probably identify with or relate to.

And yes, _it is advertising_. I have no doubt that no one walked away from
that video _not realizing_ it was advertising. So what? Advertising isn't
allowed to say something positive, or dare I say, honest?

What? Is it because they're a multinational and not a _startup_?

~~~
wdr1
> What? Is it because they're a multinational and not a startup?

Hang on. Dove is owned by Unilever, a company that also owns Axe body spray.
What kind of ads does Axe run? Well, here's a few:

<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I9tWZB7OUSU>
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpTGaENQNNg>

In other words, they're selling the Barbie stereotype with their left hand &
selling the anti-Barbie stereotype with their right.

I think it's perfectly acceptable to call bullshit on a company that does
both.

~~~
nateabele
<sarcasm> Indeed, Unilever is one gigantic, completely homogenous
organization, controlled by a single, duplicitous mastermind. </sarcasm>

Back when I first became involved in pitching major brands, I learned very
quickly that different groups within any sufficiently large organization can
have vastly different values, principles, and priorities. And, most
importantly for me at that time, different budgets.

Also: <https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/composition-division>

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Breefield
The sketch artist could have intentionally drawn the women as slightly
disproportionate from reality just to make this piece more polemic. I don't
see how that was prevented?

~~~
cristianpascu
Women DO see themselves uglier then they really are. It doesn't matter if he
exaggerated a bit. The effect is what matters.

~~~
narag
Also faces seems wider in self view. Could it be just the effect of mirror vs.
external "3d"?

~~~
jholman
With respect to "3d-ness", which presumably means the various cues your brain
uses to determine depth (stereoscopy, focal length, vergence, texture
variance, etc), there is no difference between an image through a mirror, vs
an image with no mirror.

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chiaro
Please tell me that I'm not the only one astounded by the kind of doublethink
that's being taken at face value en masse. This is a beauty company, and it's
not giving a message of "you're actually more beautiful than you think", it's
highlighting how insecure people are about their looks, and presenting their
brand as the solution, now SOCIALLY as well as just aesthetically.

It's masterful, but it's more of the same. Just more subtly.

~~~
jtheory
It'd be more grating if their main products were make-up; I think they're
mostly on the soap/shampoo side of things -- which can arguably be more about
"just be clean and you'll look nice" as opposed to "paint this gunk all over
yourself and then you'll look nice".

~~~
spinchange
Exactly. They're saying women are beautiful as they are (or more specifically,
more beautiful than they think), not that Dove's product (soap) makes them
more beautiful. I don't think or expect our community at large to appreciate
this distinction, but it's an important one and definitely not "more of the
same" for this kind of gender-specific marketing.

------
waterlesscloud
Everyone goes on about Don Draper's "carousel" moment, but this is it in real
life, in front of your eyes.

Genuine, deep emotion used to make an association with a product.

And the emotional experience is real, regardless of the marketing.

This will be a super-successful ad, way beyond their work on this campaign so
far.

~~~
Colliwinks
Genuine? This seems so forced and fake it's quite painful. No person ever
would reply "Fat with a protruding chin" when asked to describe their face.

~~~
speeder
Once I dated a former model for about 6 months.

She was one of those nordic women with big bones, literally, when she was a
model you could see easily several of her bones and she was more or less
masculine.

When I dated her, she was overweight by her standards (but had a perfectly
normal weight actually, she was underweight when she was a model), this made
her "bonyness" get bit hidden and her body got natural feminine curves, also
her face was very beautiful (you ever saw a ugly model?).

Yet, I remember how odd to me it sounded when she wanted to have sex with me
(I was not much sure about it, I was virgin) but with lights off. I was like:
"Alright, you want to convince me to have sex, but with lights off?" Then she
claimed that she was too fat and bony and she looked like a transexual...

I was kinda shocked... But over time this did not really go away, it would not
matter how much I would reassure her, or how much other men looked at me with
obvious envy, or how beautiful she really was, she always for one reason or
another thought herself ugly. This is one of the reasons the relationship fell
apart... But I never forget it, I dated a woman that was rich, powerful and a
model, but she kept thinking herself weak and ugly (specially, fat with
protuding bones... So yes, there are people that would describe themselves
like that)

~~~
Evbn
I think most people find models unattractive. Most models are gaubf skeletons
(human clothes hangers) with creepy facial expressions for the catwalk, and
ridiculous clothes.

Movie stars, rock stars/dancers, very attractive. Models, not really.

~~~
speeder
Actually, I agree with you.

This is why when I dated her, she was a former model, and "overweight" (by her
standards).

If she was still a model, I would pass... I am not into stick bags.

------
aray
As far as ad campaigns go, I have been impressed by Dove's work in blending
very interesting techniques together to give people an "Aha!" moment of new
perspective. This one and the photoshop plugin are for me the most surprising,
but the entire "Real Beauty" campaign is well done.

~~~
flyt
Yes, and in the next commercial for Axe, women are objectified and treated as
total objects by the men than desire them.

Both Dove and Axe are Unilever brands; they just target different seems of the
population with messages that they know will resonate. It's great marketing,
not social good.

~~~
josephlord
For those in the UK/NZ/Australia Axe == Lynx.

~~~
EliRivers
Is it just as foul-smelling when it's called Axe?

~~~
mistercow
Yes. And the amazing thing is that it despite its terrible potency, it doesn't
even hide the smell of BO. Men soak themselves in it, and then they smell like
they just got home from work at the cheap cologne factory and haven't had a
chance to take a shower.

------
moron4hire
The wording of the title makes it sounds like the sketch artist was a
criminal. The sketch artist was a _forensic_ sketch artist.

~~~
mikeash
No it doesn't.

~~~
moron4hire
Yes it does.

~~~
moron4hire
Petulant replies receive in kind.

------
notindexed
Heh reminds me a project i made 2 years ago. A local newspaper asked me for an
artist intervention on a full page.

To keep it short:

I send my parents to a professional photofit guy from our national police (he
never saw me, nor knows me, nor has seen a pic etc.) and made my parents
describe me to him.

It's a work about identity, how the people that are very close to you see you
and ofc the obvious link photofits have with the medium newspaper.

I removed it from my webpage (www.medium.lu) as i keep only a selection online
so i exported a .pdf for u if anyone cares to check it out:
[https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25637921/hn/identified.p...](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/25637921/hn/identified.pdf)

Cheers

~~~
StavrosK
Aw, I opened it thinking it would be interesting to compare the fit with your
photo, but there was no photo of you. This is just a sketch of some imaginary
guy, then. What's interesting about that?

------
dpolaske
Dove, killing it in the marketing game. I'm seeing this post everywhere

~~~
orangethirty
Some data as to why. [http://bigstory.ap.org/article/unilever-fourth-quarter-
sales...](http://bigstory.ap.org/article/unilever-fourth-quarter-sales-
grow-78-percent)

------
spinchange
Advertising & marketing strategies to women are usually implicitly negative
and designed to tie their value/desirability/self-worth to the additive
product being sold or an unattainable ideal that the product hopes to fulfill.
This is the complete opposite of that. So, marketing and unscientific approach
aside, I applaud it on that basis alone.

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jdavis703
I see my face everyday and know all the details that make it ugly. I barely
pay attention to such details on the average strangers face. The times I've
been asked to describe someone for the police I was always surprised at how
little I remembered about their looks. So I think this little "experiment"
more shows the fallibity of eye witnesses.

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rodelrod
Scientific research in this area points in the opposite direction: woman, like
man, see themselves as more attractive then they actually are. In the
following study, photos of the subjects were merged with photos of more
attractive and less attractive people of the same gender. The subjects
identified themselves more often in the more attractive photos rather than the
less attractive ones, and even more often than in the non-adulterated photos:
[http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/nicholas.epley/EpleyWhitchur...](http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/nicholas.epley/EpleyWhitchurch.pdf)

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tocomment
Is there a way to see all 7 without watching a video?

~~~
mverwijs
There is: <http://realbeautysketches.dove.com/>

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epo
I saw this yesterday and forwarded it to some women in my life, weapons-grade
advertising.

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jsmcgd
I never knew that sketch artists were able to make such accurate drawing from
verbal descriptions alone. Every time I've seen this on TV the interviewee is
able to see and correct the developing image.

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opminion
Those wondering about the multiple ways this could be biased, keep in mind
that by far the easiest way, in which everybody thinks that they are being
honest, is by publication or "reporting" bias.

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weirdchickalert
That was a interesting way of showing insecurities.

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kaybe
So what would it look like for men?

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colinhowe
I'd love to see photos of the women to see which is more accurate (to my eyes)

~~~
jtheory
There's a documentary video somewhere in there.

