17612: On Celebrating Inclusive Beauty.

  

From The Drum…

What Notting Hill carnival teaches us about beauty’s inclusivity problem

By Manish Tiwari, Chairman & Founder Here&Now365

Notting Hill Carnival is a masterclass in what inclusive beauty really looks like. Here&Now 365’s Preet Khanna argues that brands need to go beyond diverse casting and prove their credentials through product, presence and genuine participation in culture.

Every August, Notting Hill Carnival showcases the same beauty truth: the haircare industry still hasn’t caught up with the people it serves. Locs, coils, braids, twists and afros filled the streets, worn loud, proud and completely unfiltered. But most of the products lining supermarket shelves were designed with none of that texture in mind.

So, what better test of a haircare brand than Notting Hill Carnival, where hours of dancing, heat and humidity leave a product that doesn’t perform with nowhere to hide?

At Vatika Naturals, over 140 years have gone into building a brand around one belief: no hair type should be left behind by generic haircare standards. This year, that belief met its truest test at Notting Hill Carnival. The result was #CarnivalOfStrands, a campaign built not simply as a marketing exercise, but as a genuine attempt to meet the community where it already was.

As Roshni Singh, head of marketing at Vatika Naturals, put it: “Our ethos has always been to embrace your natural self, and that belief sits at the heart of everything we create for our multi-ethnic audiences. #CarnivalOfStrands was a genuine attempt to cater to every hair type and celebrate the unique rhythm of every strand, part of a wider journey to build a brand that speaks to the full diversity of hair textures across our communities.”

What did this year’s Carnival tell us about building an inclusive beauty brand?

The gap is about presence, not awareness

Most ‘inclusive’ haircare campaigns stop at representation in imagery: a wider range of models, a more diverse casting brief. That’s necessary, but it’s not sufficient. What became clear early on was that the real gap was physical. Brands simply weren't showing up in the spaces where textured hair is most visibly, joyfully on display. So instead of running the campaign purely through digital media, Vatika went to where the hair was, taking over key spaces at Paddington Station to greet Carnival-goers the moment they stepped off the train.

That decision reshaped how the campaign was thought about as a whole. A poster can say a brand is inclusive but simply meeting someone where they are already celebrating says it more convincingly than any headline could.

Culture-first doesn’t mean culture-adjacent

There’s a difference between borrowing a moment and actually contributing to it. Partnering with Sundivas, a London-based music duo, let Vatika carry its brand ethos, ‘own your story, let them know’, through sound rather than just signage. It’s a small distinction, but an important one: Carnival’s invitation to show up exactly as you are works best when a brand adds something to that spirit rather than simply attaching itself to it.

Product credibility still must do the work

None of this lands without the product actually performing. Vatika’s Aquaboost and Curls Oil ranges exist because curl patterns behave differently under heat, humidity and hours of movement, the exact conditions Carnival puts hair through. But the bigger lesson for the industry isn’t about any single formula. It’s that inclusivity claims collapse quickly if the product itself was never built with textured hair as the standard, rather than an addition to an existing range. Carnival is where that promise was put to the test and proven right.

It’s more than just one campaign message

The haircare industry’s ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach has rarely reflected what Carnival looks like on the streets, and that mismatch isn’t unique to one event. It shows up every time a brand treats textured hair as a niche rather than a norm.

What #CarnivalOfStrands reinforced is that closing that gap takes more than a campaign message; it takes formulation built for the full range of textures, and a willingness to show up physically in the communities a brand says it's serving.

Vatika doesn’t claim to have solved that. But the brand came away from this Carnival with a sharper sense of what “inclusive” has to mean in practice: not a wider casting call, but a wider standard, for what counts as normal hair, and for where a brand is willing to turn up and prove it.

17605: On Exposing Ugliness Of PepsiCo Pageantry.

 

More About Advertising published a lengthy perspective titled, “Ad agency pitch theatre is not a sport, but a beauty contest,” providing a probing analysis of PepsiCo global media duties shifting from Omnicom to Publicis Groupe.

The title poses two inherent flaws.

First, the PepsiCo business was awarded sans pitch. To play off the content concept, a winner was crowned without having to appear in the swimsuit competition—or any other pageant event. Indeed, it’s unclear how the decision was made, rendering the entire affair suspicious and potentially scandalous.

Second, the opinion piece was illustrated by the AI-generated image depicted above. A more accurate cartoon would have presented three Old White Guys, an Asian man, and a White woman. It’s an exclusive—and not very pretty—spectacle.

17190: On Shiftiness In Beauty Standards.

Advertising Age published content on Adland’s alleged shift in beauty standards, presenting a plethora of pouting, pissing, and pontificating.

 

Sorry, but there has been no shift—contrary to the performative propaganda from brands like Dove and Always.

 

Eurocentric beauty standards continue to dominate—along with the discriminating creators of such mirrors, models, and measures.

 

Saying anything otherwise is White noise.

 

Inside advertising’s shift in beauty standards—body positivity backtrack and the rise of AI models

 

By Adrianne Pasquarelli

 

Every August, Cindy Gallop pages through the September issue of Vogue—long considered the fashion bible—and posts her reactions in real-time on X. In the past, the diversity, equity and inclusion advocate and industry consultant has used the hashtag #CarefullyCalibratedDiversity to reference brands’ overly obvious attempts to check the DEI box regarding size and ethnic diversity. But this year, she expects marketers to abandon even that façade.

 

“Permission has now been given to abandon any pretense, or superficial attempt at diversity,” said Gallop, the founder and CEO of IfWeRanTheWorld and MakeLoveNotPorn. “It’s not only that you are free to abandon all pretense of diversity—it would now actively advantage you to go in the complete opposite direction as right now there is a huge audience celebrating tradwives, celebrating ballerina farm, celebrating womanhood as blonde-haired and blue-eyed, sorority rush.”

 

Recent marketing, such as American Eagle’s controversial Sydney Sweeney campaign and Guess’ use of an AI-created fashion model, demonstrates a shift by brands away from the body positivity movement of the last few years. As more companies backtrack on DEI initiatives, they appear also to be shying away from the physical inclusivity of plus-size models—instead, they are promoting body stereotypes.

 

Experts point to causes such as the digital pressure from social media to be thin, as well as the growing usage of GLP-1 drugs such as Wegovy. Meanwhile, those brands that are still embracing diversity have little to say about it at a time when the public is eager to voice its outcry.

 

“In general, society is swinging back from body positivity and body acceptance into one focused more on fitness and being stereotypically hot like Sydney Sweeney,” said Kyla Noni Brathwaite, assistant professor in communication and media at the University of Michigan. “We are seeing that in advertising as well.”

 

The shift marks a departure from the more realistic body types brands such as Athleta, Old Navy and even American Eagle-owned Aerie had been embracing in their advertising. That work appeared driven in part by celebrities with different body types such as Lizzo and the Kardashians, noted Yalda T. Uhls, the founder and CEO of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers at UCLA.

 

“But we all have grown up, older generations and younger generations, internalizing these images that we think we really should have, so it’s very easy to reset back to thinking that’s better than someone who has a regular body or is a little bit overweight,” she said.

 

Some brands are quietly size-diverse

 

Few brands are willing to discuss the body diversity landscape, even those marketers that are still featuring size-diverse models. For example, Abercrombie & Fitch’s denim campaign released late last month includes a variety of body types and skin tones. A recent Instagram post from the brand attracted more than 6,220 likes and prompted comments such as “Thank GOD Abercrombie isn’t cutting out their plus size models/clothing-one of the few major brands doing what’s right.”

 

Similarly, the Gap, which has regained relevancy in recent years, regularly uses diverse models in its ads, including by body type and age. Earlier this year, the clothier won acclaim for a campaign featuring 56-year-old actress Parker Posey.

 

Both Abercrombie and the Gap declined to comment for this story.

 

Another marketer, activewear brand Sweaty Betty, debuted a body-positive campaign “Wear The Damn Shorts” in May, following research the brand conducted that found 67% of women say body image negatively affects their self-esteem.

 

“Our Wear The Damn Shorts campaign is all about trying to help women feel uplifted and confident in their own skin,” a Sweaty Betty spokeswoman wrote via email. But she declined to comment further about the campaign and the issue of body diversity in the advertising landscape.

 

When Guess used AI to create its blonde-haired, flawlessly complexioned model for a fashion spread in Vogue last month, many consumers were aghast. Shortly after the Sweeney “genetics” campaign, the move reignited the debate over body inclusivity, artificial beauty and the future of real human models.

 

Guess did not return requests for comment.

 

Two years ago, Levi’s faced backlash when it announced it would be using artificial intelligence to incorporate more diversity in its models, prompting consumers to question why the brand wasn’t simply hiring more models of color. In response, Levi’s appeared to backtrack and confirmed its focus on live models and photo shoots. The brand’s latest year-long campaign features Beyoncé and includes products from the singer.

 

Gallop called replacing models with AI “ridiculous” and noted the hypocrisy.

“It’s ironic that brands all say that people value authenticity—it’s true, people do value authenticity,” she said. “So if you want to build emotional connections with your consumers, you do that through what you create and you do that through having people in your ads that your target audience can relate to.”

 

Gen Z values authenticity

 

Brands using AI models risk backlash from Gen Z, a group that is fast-growing in buying power and influence. Gen Zers are widely known to value authenticity from brands, especially in ads. Unlike older generations, the cohort is also tuned in to marketing in particular, often calling out the discipline by name on social media, for example, something writer Emily Sundberg recently referenced in her business newsletter “Feed Me.”

 

“Gen Z are media literate and can spot a box-ticking ad from a mile off,” said Audrey Birner, U.S. insights director at Beano Brain, a specialist agency that focuses on generational trends. She noted that the group is “fluent” in the language of marketing because they’ve been marketed to since birth on various platforms. “They’re not looking for performative inclusion, they want authenticity.”

 

The growing adoption of GLP-1 drugs is adding to the pressure for perfection in ads, experts say. For example, Brathwaite noted that the widespread availability of such medications, and their use by prominent celebrity figures, have made it more acceptable to change your body to be thin. In addition, social media tips on getting skinny or the latest workout or diets have created more of a focus on stereotypical bodies.

 

“Specifically with TikTok, I’m always observing new trends in terms of how bodies should look—this is how women should look or act or be, this is the new workout you should try,” Brathwaite said.

 

But overall, more than two-thirds of U.S. women are plus-size, and it might be in brands’ best interest to court such majorities at a time when bottom lines are under economic pressure. Gallop noted the disconnect between the ultra-thin consumer brands they think will want their clothes and the real person who will actually pay for them.

 

“They will not [pay] if they do not feel an emotional connection with you and they do not feel that you want to sell to them,” she said. “Any brand with guts should be looking at the American Eagle debacle and saying, ‘How can we be the opposite of that?’”

16663: Dove Real Screwy Media Plan.

 

Here’s an advertorial from the recently spotlighted Dove Real Beauty propaganda taking an anti-AI stance, pontificating for the kind of beauty Unilever wants AI to learn. Right.

 

What makes the preachy platform so ridiculous? The advertorial is running in beauty and fashion publications like Vogue, where the magazine content and advertisements nearly exclusively present supermodel standards—and presumably successfully, as such publishers and advertisers appear to maintain their global popularity.

 

It’s clear proof that Dove and Unilever have failed in their self-absorbed, delusional, and hypocritical ambitions to redefine beauty.

16611: AI Proves Dove’s Real Beauty Is Real Bullshit…?

Advertising Age spotlighted a new performative promotion from the Dove Real Beauty campaign—a video titled, “The Code.”

 

Now the Unilever brand is pledging to never use AI in its advertising. Given the surging interest in AI, the stunt seems like an opportunistic declaration—and unnecessarily redundant, as the self-absorbed campaign is supposedly rooted in portraying “real” women.

 

BTW, the video—created by Sao Paulo-based Soko—features a woman in the opening that appears to be model-quality talent. The video is also most focused on romancing the AI image of a White woman.

 

Dove boasts that adding “Dove Real Beauty” to AI prompts for beautiful women leads to images from its campaign. Duh. Such extraordinary bullshit.

 

If Dove’s long-standing grandstanding had even minimal effect on global culture, why would AI’s perception of beauty automatically maintain the Eurocentric standards that Dove has allegedly sought to counteract for decades?

 

“The Code” ultimately proves that the 20-year-old Dove Real Beauty campaign has utterly failed to achieve its propagandistic goal.

 

For Dove, AI stands for Absolute Insincerity.

 

Dove pledges not to use AI to portray real people in its ads

 

Anti-AI stance comes as the Dove Real Beauty campaign marks 20 years

 

By Phoebe Bain

 

For Dove, real beauty means no artificial intelligence. In the newest campaign for its long-running Real Beauty platform, the Unilever brand pledges to never use AI in its advertising to portray real people, while introducing a prompt that will yield more realistic body representations for people who do use AI to search for beauty images.

 

The skin care and hair care brand’s new “Real Beauty Prompt Guidelines” provide instructions for creating images using generative AI programs that are representative of “real beauty.” The effort comes as Dove celebrates the 20th year of the iconic campaign.

 

“Pledging to never use AI in our communications is just one step. We will not stop until beauty is a source of happiness, not anxiety, for every woman and girl,” Dove Chief Marketing Officer Alessandro Manfredi said in a recent email to Ad Age.

 

A new ad called “The Code” intends to shed light on AI’s impact on beauty standards. The video begins by showing what AI comes up with when prompted to create images of “the most beautiful woman in the world” (she’s blonde, thin and white), and it ends with what AI creates when prompted with “the most beautiful woman in the world, according to Dove Real Beauty Ad.” The latter AI-generated images show diverse women who look far more realistic. The ad includes a brief flashback to one of the original Real Beauty ads from 2004.

 

Other than for “The Code,” Dove has not used AI to represent real people in its ads, a brand spokesperson told Ad Age.

 

The ad was created by Sao Paulo-based Soko.

 

New study, other industry efforts

 

Dove conducted a global study for its Real Beauty campaign anniversary to better understand how people’s perception of beauty has changed in the two decades since the campaign launched. It found that AI has impacted the level of pressure women feel to be a certain type of beautiful, with 39% of women surveyed saying they feel “pressure to alter their appearance because of what they see online, even when they know it’s fake or AI-generated.”

 

The study also found that 73% of women feel more pressure to be beautiful than they did eight years ago, while 85% said they’ve been exposed to harmful beauty content online. Conducted by Edelman’s data consultancy Edelman DXI between November and December 2023, researchers spoke with 33,000 respondents in 20 countries for the survey.

 

Dove isn’t the only brand that has highlighted how AI images can negatively impact women. Direct-to-consumer period underwear brand Thinx’s new “GetBodyWise” campaign, created with BBDO Los Angeles, called attention to how AI has a tendency to characterize women’s health issues as inherently shameful, due to the ways in which AI is trained by biased human input.

 

Other companies, including CVS, have also made commitments around emphasizing beauty standard authenticity in their marketing materials. In 2021, CVS announced it had reached full transparency in marking beauty imagery either with its CVS Beauty Mark, for imagery that wasn’t materially altered, or with labeling signifying “digitally altered” images.

 

“At Dove, we seek a future in which women get to decide and declare what real beauty looks like—not algorithms. As we navigate the opportunities and challenges that come with new and emerging technology, we remain committed to protect, celebrate, and champion Real Beauty,” Manfredi said.

16459: Beauty Line Reflects Beauty Standards In Cyprus..?

 

This Beauty Line video from Orb Marketing & Communications in the Republic of Cyprus takes an anti-Dove Real Beauty angle with a pro-dove diversity stance—ie, the pseudo supermodels are White as doves.

 

 

16243: Serious About Shape. Real Inclusion, Not So Much.

 

This Simply Be campaign tardily jumps on the plus-sized bandwagon and targets women of color—brought to you by a predominately White design firm. Something doesn’t feel right with the scenario, it’s an uncomfortable fit.

 

10634: BHM 2023—Sally Beauty.

 

Digiday Media’s Glossy spotlighted the BHM campaign from Sally Beauty that celebrates Black hair and joy. Maybe BHM stands for Black Hair Month…?

 

Sally Beauty celebrates textured hair in Black History Month campaign

 

By Emma Sandler

 

In honor of Black History Month, Sally Beauty is celebrating Black hair and joy.

 

The month-long campaign, launched on February 1 and called We See You, celebrates inclusivity through founder spotlights on social media, in-store signage and dedicated space on e-commerce. The campaign video features multiple BIPOC models with different hair textures, curls and colors, in various moments of repose and joy, styling their hair or showing off their hair style. Overlaying these images is text that reads, “We see you. If you have textured hair, you’ve heard. Supporting Black-owned brands and pro-quality products for 20 years.” Additionally, the ad includes audio snippets of questions often posed to people with textured hair, like “Is your hair real?” or “Can I touch it?” Those are followed by responses like, “That’s my hair business,” and “Like a work of art, no touching.”

 

“The sense of community, love and acceptance is a big component of this campaign. It also highlights our authority in the space, as Sally Beauty has cultivated and brought different texture brands to market for over 20 years,” said Carolyne Guss, CMO of Sally Beauty.

 

Guss pointed out that Sally Beauty retails over 100 textured hair brands, 54% of which are Black-owned and founded. It was also the first retail partner for buzzy textured hair brands like Eden Bodyworks and Mielle Organics, the latter of which sold to P&G in late 2022 for an undisclosed sum. Sally Beauty’s core customers are typically women of color. In 2019, at least 30% of its hair-care sales were textured-hair products, according to previous Glossy reporting.

 

In addition to the video, Sally Beauty asked campaign models and influencers to write love letters to their own hair, which are being shared on the Sally Beauty e-commerce site and social media. For paid media, Sally Beauty is concentrating on Instagram and Facebook ads, and unpaid media placements on TikTok, YouTube and Instagram. Guss declined to share investment figures but called the campaign an important, full-funnel marketing initiative. QR codes in-store will drive consumers to a SallyBeauty.com landing page spotlighting Black founders, which will have rotating information on founders, products and love letters. Founders and brands include Monique Rodriguez from Mielle Organics, Janelle Stevens from Camille Rose, and Jesseca Dupart from Kaleidoscope, among others.

 

Sally Beauty Holdings net sales for the first quarter of fiscal year 2023 were $957 million, a decrease of 2.4% year-over-year, driven by 350 store closures and unfavorable foreign exchange impact. However, e-commerce sales increased 14% to $91 million, representing 9.5% of net sales.

 

“We’re focused on our loyal customers, as well as acquiring new customers through our marketing program, differentiated product offerings in professional color and care, and strategic initiatives,” said Denise Paulonis, CEO of Sally Beauty Holdings, on the company’s first-quarter 2023 earnings call Thursday. Sally Beauty maintains 17 million active loyalty members across U.S. and Canada, representing 77% of first-quarter sales.

 

Since 2020, numerous brands and retailers have increased their investment in BIPOC-owned or -founded brands. Some retailers, like Ulta Beauty and Sephora, committed to the 15 Percent Pledge to increase such brand representation on shelves. Others, like Urban Decay, have sought to amplify Black beauty experiences, sometimes without any direct product-tie-in. Digiday reported that companies, including beauty subscription box Ipsy, are extending their Black History Month marketing efforts beyond February.

 

As part of Sally Beauty’s campaign, the company will host a series of in-store and online promotions for textured hair products to drive top-line sales. On the earnings call, Paulonis said the company has not increased promotions in any meaningful way, but that Sally Beauty is leaning more into promotions when it can and that customers are looking for and taking advantage of promotions. According to Guss, to gauge the success of the “We See You” campaign, the company will measure the media impact and the extent to which its drives store and e-commerce traffic.

 

“[Our dedication to Black customers] isn’t something that we do and then walk away from after a short period of time. It’s an ongoing part of Sally Beauty,” said Guss.

15716: BHM 2022—Ulta Beauty.

Ulta Beauty celebrates BHM with an Ode to Black Beauty, delivered by Poet and Artist Jasmine Mans. Lovely, except the film was orchestrated by McCann Worldgroup, whose reflection of Black beauty is… oh, never mind. At least they didn’t ask former McCann Health CCO Jeremy Perrott to weigh in.