The theme of the upcoming American Marketing Association (AMA), Toronto Canada’s Marketing Hall of Legends event, where the founder of Environics Research, Michael Adams, will be honoured as an inductee, is the Butterfly Effect. The Butterfly Effect is the idea that, in a complex system, something as tiny as the flapping of a butterfly’s wings can set changes in motion that culminate in effects that are huge and difficult to predict, like a hurricane on the other side of the world.
One version of the “butterfly” in this metaphor can be an insightful creator who notices an important but quiet change in society and finds a way to express that change in a way that harnesses its full force to achieve a goal. With this theme in mind, I’ve been thinking about the Butterfly Effect of values and how they often shift gradually over time, quietly shaping the conditions for major cultural moments to emerge. It led me to reflect on campaigns that captured these moments so effectively and to go back to the data to trace how these value shifts unfolded, often years before they reached the cultural mainstream.
One such campaign that stood out as a prime example of this is the Dove Real Beauty Campaign.
It succeeded not just because it was creatively bold, but because it deeply understood the body-positive values people were embracing at the time. Environics Research has tracked Social Values in Canada since 1983 and in the United States since 1992, and the values landscape that made the Real Beauty campaign resonate is evident in our data but at the time, those values hadn’t yet found full expression in the culture. The alignment of the cultural context and Dove’s strong creative work made the campaign feel human, timely, and emotionally resonant.
Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign: A Quick Refresher
The campaign launched in 2004 and achieved peak visibility around 2006–2007. Its visuals were arresting partly because of their well-executed simplicity but mainly because they featured women most consumers were not accustomed to seeing in advertising – women in bigger bodies, with vitiligo, with densely freckled faces, with many shades of skin and textures of hair. Every single one looked vibrant and happy, completely at ease in their (Dove-cleansed) skin – and ultimately beautiful.
Far from being put off by these women who “didn’t look like models,” most consumers felt a jolt of delight and relief. They were already impatient with the relentlessness of traditional beauty norms in advertising, including a lack of cultural diversity and the extreme thinness of most models. Two decades later, the Dove campaign remains a staple in undergraduate marketing courses: a culturally resonant, commercially successful slam dunk.
The Cultural Climate Leading Up to Real Beauty
What were the cultural energies the Real Beauty campaign tapped into? Using Environics’ Social Values data, we can identify some of the relevant values that were rising and falling in the lead-up to the campaign.
Values on the rise
Multiculturalism – Our data show that in the early 2000s, people increasingly wanted to see diversity represented in all areas of life – from politics and communities to media. As more media outlets reflected this public desire, the prominence and cultural importance of diversity grew.
Rejection of Authority – A decades-long trend of declining deference to authority made space for new narratives and perspectives to emerge. People were more inclined to question prevailing norms. “I’m not beautiful? Says who?”
Brand Genuineness – Values data reflected a growing desire for brands to be real, transparent, and aligned with consumers’ personal values.
Declining values
Patriarchy – This value reached some of its lowest levels by the mid-2000s, weakening the cultural grip of beauty standards grounded in the average white, heterosexual man’s ideas of attractiveness.
Traditional Family – The culture was placing less emphasis on conformity to women’s historical roles as caregivers whose main job was to support husbands and raise kids. Ideas of family and womanhood were evolving.
Need for Status Recognition – Gender roles aside, our data showed a shift away from perfection and prestige toward relatability. Increasingly, consumers wanted to see representations of people who were authentic and fulfilled, not superficially “winning.”
Why the Campaign Worked
In short, the Real Beauty campaign worked because the culture was ready. Dove’s creative team didn’t invent the ideas that underpinned Real Beauty; they reflected back what women were already feeling, but hadn’t yet seen represented in mainstream media. Dove tapped into values that were already gaining momentum.
Lessons for Today’s Marketers: Values as Early Signals
Brands that pay attention to shifting Social Values, especially values on the rise, can position themselves ahead of the curve. By watching values changes over time, marketers can better understand which messages are becoming tired or outdated, and which cultural sensibilities are quietly bubbling to the surface but have not yet been expressed at scale.
Testing creative ideas against segments or personas built using Social Values is also a good way to anticipate the possible range of public responses. Dove’s Real Beauty campaign was released in a world where the internet and social media had not yet enabled the public to self-select into niche audiences. Today, the same campaign would likely achieve resonance with large audiences and would also provoke scorn in online subcultures organized around the aggressive embrace of values that are receding elsewhere. Indeed, 20 years after the Real Beauty campaign, the Dove Self-Esteem project is expressing concern about the harmful enforcement of beauty standards online
Seeing the culture through the lens of Social Values can help brands proceed with bold ideas that may feel risky, but that are likely to connect with the world in a meaningful and authentic way. Captured and expressed through the right creative campaign, today’s Social Values shifts can become tomorrow’s Real Beauty moments.
Quiet Signals, Big Impact
Has a single butterfly ever really caused a hurricane by flapping its wings? I’m not sure. But tiny, delicate butterflies can fly at speeds of 100 kilometres an hour, using their extraordinary sensitivity to the air currents around them – deftly positioning their wings to get where they’re going using powerful forces they don’t control. While the creators of Dove’s Real Beauty campaign didn’t cause the changes in Social Values I’ve described here, they did sense them and as a result they released a creative campaign that seemed fresh and bold in the moment precisely because it was rooted in years of deep cultural change.
Today’s marketers who tune in to Social Values gain the capacity to not just to reflect culture, but to respond to it and even shape it responsibly and empathetically.
Multiculturalism
Rejection Of Authority
Brand Genuineness