I knew that Dove has gotten a lot of positive publicity for the Real Beauty campaign, but I wasn’t certain if they considered it successful. Pete Blackshaw of BuzzMetrics says ‘yes’ based on the number of viewers, mentions in blogs and forums, strong positive referrals, borrowing of the imagery, links, and emotional level of the conversations. Since "Real Beauty" communicates a position instead of promoting a product, it qualifies beautifully to meet the ClueTrain Manifesto‘s definition of "marketing as conversation." Now the challenge is for the Dove product manager to produce plenty of products that demonstrate this stand they have taken.

ClickZ: Real Beauty, Real Breakthrough in Consumer-Fortified Media 2006-Nov-1, by Pete Blackshaw

..If you put
all the CGM [consumer-generated media] related to this campaign in a blender, you’d see a unique
set of emotions bubble to the top: empathy, compassion, rage,
empowerment, excitement, and even cynicism and defeatism. Like it or
not, all this feeds dialogue and conversation. The big caveat is all
this is very difficult to repeat with consistency or precision; often
it backfires….