Finding Out More About Girl's Self-Esteem

The Dove Self Esteem Weekend will take place on October 22-24. During this event, people and organizations across the nation are encouraged to hold a weekend of self-esteem building activities. “One hour of your time can make a world of difference in a young girl’s self-esteem,” serves as the inspiring thought for the weekend.

Community members who wish to get involved in this initiative can get involved in many ways, by downloading a guide on how to talk to girls about self-esteem, joining the facebook group, finding a local organization to get involved with such as Girl Scouts, Girls Inc, or Boys and Girls Club of America, and even buy buying a Dove product, one can feel good that part of the proceeds will go to the Self-Esteem fund. Programs like this make consumers feel empowered and connected to the company. It also helps to demonstrate that the company is investing in their well-being.

The weekend activities planned around the nation are truly grass roots. “All events are the sole responsibility of the individual organizer or organization involved. Dove provides resources and suggested activity guides but does not hold the actual events and is not responsible for what takes place at events in connection with this weekend.”

Because this movement is being led by individual people, with the support of Dove, I believe that it is extremely important for an organization like Dove/Unilever to evaluate its success. Part of ensuring the success of the Fund is to track how many community members engage with the program and assess how they felt the program impacted their lives. For the Dove Self-Esteem Weekend event, (which, I am sure a company like Unilever has already begun this process), I would definitely advise having research methods in place to assess how the program was received. Now, this does not mean Dove has to survey every single participant. Rather, they can generate a random sampling reflective of those who participated. This can be done by first having the list of where programs will be taking place across the nation. From that list, Dove can choose to sample a certain percentage of participants. In order to ensure that each type of event in different regions is assessed, the best way to generate this sample is to start with a list of the types of events (individuals, neighborhoods, organizations), and then list them by geographically  

For instance, we could break the up the map by 4 regions (NE, SE, NW, and SW) and then by type of person/people organizing the event (i=individual, n=neighborhood, o=organization).

Right now there are 216 events planned across North America. For our purposes, let’s set make a smaller hypothetical situation, maybe 39.  To generate the sample, we could pick a random starting spot and then systematically select, say, every 5^th place (which would result in a sample size of 8, or about 30%). So let’s say we start at 4.

1.      NE, N

2.      NE, N

3.      NE, N

4.      NE, I

5.      NE, O

6.      NE, O

7.      NE, O

8.      NE, O

9.      NE, O

10.  NE, O

11.  NW, N

12.  NW, N

13.  NW, N

14.  NW, N

15.  NW, O

16.  NW, O

17.  NW, O

18.  NW, O

19.  NW, O

20.  NW, O

21.  NW, O

22.  NW, O

23.  NW, O

24.  NW, I

25.  NW, I

26.  SE, N

27.  SE, N

28.  SE, O

29.  SE, O

30.  SE, O

31.  SE, O

32.  SE, I

33.  SE, I

34.  SW, N

35.  SW, N

36.  SW, O

37.  SW, O

38.  SW, O

39.  SW, I

As you can see, events from each region and type were selected. (NE I, NE O, NW N, NW O, NW I, SE O, SW N, and SW O)

Next week, I’ll discuss operationalizing what we’re trying to find out with our survey. Thanks for reading!

Are you attending a Dove self-esteem event? Write about it below!

Really Caring to Find Out the Answer - A Good Strategy for PR

In 2006, Dove went against the grain. It presented a commercial not aimed to be put at the list of top 10 funniest Super Bowl commercials. Instead, it presented a commercial for the Campaign for Real Beauty. The commercial showed young girls and pointed out that one thought she was fat, one hated her freckles, and one thought she was ugly. At the end is the seemingly simple message “Let’s Change Their Minds.”

Since then, through the Dove Self-Esteem Fund, Dove has connected with 4.8 million girls globally with self-esteem programming. In the U.S., Dove supports the Girls Scouts of the USA to help build confidence in girls 8-17 with after-school programs, self-esteem building events and educational resources.

One of the most interesting pieces of this movement, I found, was that Dove not only supports this idea, they are spearheading it. They state in a recent press release that “When girls feel bad about their looks, 70 percent disconnect from life—avoiding normal daily activities like attending school or even giving their opinion—which can put their dreams on hold, and jeopardize their potential as future leaders, decision makers, and role models.” This statistic comes from their own research project titled “Dove Research: Rebuilding the Foundation of Beauty Beliefs.” This shows that Unilever has identified a cause on which to connect with its constituents, in this case, women and girls, and has committed itself to furthering the cause by conducting research on the issue and partnering with organizations such as Girl Scouts of America, the Boys and Girls Club, and Girl’s Inc. The result? 176,916 are connected to Dove through facebook, 7,023 follow Dove on Twitter, and of course, the millions of people who have participated in Dove Self-Esteem Fund Programming.

And of course, “Dove, manufactured by Unilever, is the No. 1 personal wash brand nationwide. One in every three households uses a Dove product, which includes beauty bars, body washes, anti-perspirant/deodorants, body mists, hair care and styling aids.” (Dove information on Unilever website)

This kind of relational campaign between Dove and it’s consumers is exactly the kind of mutually beneficial relationship that Public Relations practitioners and their organizations strive to achieve.

That's What She Said: Research to address consumer needs

Companies in today's market are “without borders,” so to speak. With the sophistication of technology, the ability to expand an organizations market is more and more attainable. Today, more companies are strategizing ways to promote their goods or services in untapped markets. According to an article published in the New York Times on August 11, 2010 many companies are focusing their efforts to target the Muslim market abroad.

Why? Because the market is growing. The article states that “For decades, many Western company [sic] failed to appreciate the unique needs of Muslim consumers, marketing experts say. Worse, some companies offended potential customers by not understanding religious sensitivities. But as the Islamic population has grown in size and affluence — there are now 1.57 billion Muslims worldwide — more multinationals are seeking to tap into the market.”

But, as this quote points out, the Muslim market in Malaysia, for instance, is a whole other ball of wax than the Western market we are used to in the United States. Therefore, there are considerations when advertising to these markets. These considerations are addressed by first conducting social research. In the case here, employees at Unilever's Sunsilk division had to ask Muslin women about their concerns about their hair. This exploration is crucial to ensure that any campaign launched does not cause any offense to the intended audience. No small task when you consider that “with Muslim-majority countries spread from Southeast Asia to Africa, and Muslims speaking numerous languages and adhering to varying standards of dress and other customs, approaching the group as consumers can be complex.”

So, they did their homework. Or, in other words, their social research (see, I told you this would all circle back to research). To get started, the research designers would have had to begin by defining the purpose of their research – exploring the needs and wants among Muslim women in countries such as Malaysia, Egypt, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The research here is largely exploratory in that it is trying to understand a topic of particular interest. For instance, one company highlighted in the article, Ogilvy Noor (an arm of Ogilvy &Mather) put together a survey study that asked consumers to rate brand appeal. For Sunsilk, they may have used such methods as consumer surveys and/or focus groups asking women about their hair care needs and desires.

Next is to analyze the data and try to see how it answers the question you asked in the beginning. In this case, we wanted to know what concerns Muslim women and their hair care. Unilever found that many Muslim women who wear the tudung, a traditional head covering, reported that they suffered from oily scalps after wearing the headpiece all day. Sunsilk Lively Clean & Fresh shampoo was developed to combat exactly this issue, so Unilever created the television commercial featuring a Muslim woman wearing the tudung and espousing the benefits of the shampoo.

Unilever is a smart company. They didn't release a commercial aimed at Western women, which feature images such as women tossing their shiny long locks. They knew their market because they had done their research. And it was good research. They listened to the concerns of their publics – that their scalps were oily – and they developed and offered them a product to address this need. That's using good research for smart PR. 

Research in the Real World

These days, public relations have a bad reputation. When you hear someone say “PR” maybe you think of BP or Toyota, with anger and frustration. Maybe you were offended by someone’s flippant response that they’d like their life back, while 11 workers had died and millions of gallons of oil spewed into the Gulf, robbing people of their livelihoods. Or maybe you see visions of a company that doesn’t seem to care that cars went flying off the roads due to (alleged, the jury is still out) faulty mechanics.


So why would anyone decide: “I want to go into PR”? Good question. As someone looking into a graduate program in Public Relations, this was a question I asked myself. While PR has its admittedly awful examples of bad PR, it’s the good PR that goes largely unnoticed and unappreciated. But the job of PR, actually, is to bring the voices and concerns of the publics – the employees, the consumers, the shareholders, etc. – to the attention of organization management. When the CEO’s and VP’s discuss the trajectory of the company, thanks to PR, they can do so with the concerns of involved stakeholders in mind. This is done with research and listening to those publics.

Public Relations, then, is really a social science. It is a science about listening to people and what they have to say about a company and about how an organization's decisions affect their lives. This communication is done through many avenues of social research, including survey, experiment, and social observation, to name a few. The goal is to improve the functioning of an organization to ensure its socially-responsible future. Lofty, right? I hope not.

As a student of this discipline, I am approaching this experience of graduate school with high expectations. I want to learn all about how to listen to people and present their best interests. This semester, I am participating in a Research Methods class, designed to explore valid and useful ways of conducting this research on organization stakeholders. I will be keeping this blog to document what I learn, as I learn it.

I have decided to approach this experience hypothetically, considering the topics as if I was an employee on the Communications team for the company Unilever. You’ve probably used a product by Unilever, even if you don’t know it. They make products under the labels Dove, Axe, Lipton, Hellman’s, Bertolli, Knorr, and many other familiar brands. The company makes these food, home care, and personal care products under the self-professed umbrella that their products "add vitality to life." This image, mission, and how the company relates to its publics (it’s PR, in other words) is something I will explore here, through the lens of social research. Thanks for reading! Check out Unilever’s website below.

Actually, to kick off this blog, I’d love if you would post your initial comments about the website below. We’ll call it the first steps in a rather unofficial research project… http://www.unilever.com/