March 7th, 2011
Dove Shows Athletes Off the Court
The New York Times
WHEN Magic Johnson, the retired N.B.A. star, appeared in commercials for Converse sneakers in the 1980s, he and a rival, Larry Bird, engaged in trash talk. In a new commercial for Dove Men and Care, Mr. Johnson is talking trash again, but the tone is decidedly different.
“My father had a trash-hauling service,” Mr. Johnson says in the spot, by Davie Brown Entertainment, part of Omnicom. “Kids would always tease you: ‘Aw, there goes the trashman.’ But my father was confident and never even blinked an eye, so it made me stand tall, because he stood tall.”
As family photographs appear onscreen, including one of Mr. Johnson as a teenager with his arm around his father, he says, “My name is Magic Johnson, and I’m definitely comfortable in my own skin.”
The spot is part of a series of commercials by Dove, a Unilever brand, called “Journey to Comfort,” in which athletes focus less on sports than on their families. The newest phase of the campaign, scheduled to begin on March 14 and run during the N.C.A.A. men’s championship tournament, includes more commercials with Mr. Johnson, along with others that feature John Thompson III, head coach of Georgetown’s men’s basketball team, and Bobby Hurley, a former star at Duke.
All of them discuss being comfortable in their own skin, which along with the common meaning of the expression, self-assurance, is meant more literally to convey the moisturizing properties of Dove Men and Care’s soap bars and shower gels.
Rob Candelino, who as director of the personal wash division at Unilever also oversees soap by brands including Axe, Suave and the original Dove, said Dove Men and Care, which was introduced about a year ago, seeks a specific consumer.
“This is a guy who’s reached a point in his life when he’s very comfortable with who he is as a man,” said Mr. Candelino. “He’s in his mid- to late-30s, has a couple kids, and he’s had quite an eventful life.”
Bawdy ads by Axe, aimed at men ages 18 to 24, “support the guy and help his confidence in the mating game,” but the Dove men’s line, Mr. Candelino said, “speaks to a guy who’s been through all that, who lived through those teen years and his 20s and got married and had kids.”
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/business/media/07adco.html?ref=business