Do you think this Dove commercial is deliberately trying to trick you?

Click the link below to watch it before reading my analysis. Go ahead, watch it now. I’ll wait…

Ok, so what did you think? Did they prove that Dove is more gentle than other soap bars? I say no for two reasons:

1. Most people aren’t aware of the technical definition of “soap.”

The commercial compares Dove to soap bars. Isn’t Dove a soap, you ask? No, it’s not. Soap, in case you didn’t know, is specifically defined as fatty acids that are neutralized by an alkali such as lye. But Dove is not soap – it’s what is known as a Syndet bar (which stands for synthetic detergent.) And it’s true that these synthetic detergents are less drying and less damaging to skin proteins.

But here’s the first reason the commercial is misleading: when they show Dove is better than “baby soap” or “face soap” or “family soap” they don’t tell you that’s only true for true soaps. There are plenty of other “soap” brands besides Dove which use synthetic detergents. The commercial relies on the inherent confusion in knowing that a “soap bar” may not really be soap.

2. The demonstration is one-sided

I couldn’t believe this: The damage is only shown for soap bars NOT for the Dove bar. That’s right! The first time I watched the commercial I thought it was strange that the degree of destruction of skin (as implied by the test paper) was so extreme for the soap bars and so minimal for the Dove bar. In fact, it didn’t appear that Dove damaged the paper AT ALL.

Upon a second viewing I realized that they’re only showing test results for the “regular” soap bars – they don’t show the how test paper behaves on the Dove bar at all! Watch it again – you’ll see that they show how the test paper dissolves with regular soap. They show a quick series of time lapse images of the dissolution of the test paper on face soap, baby soap, and family soap. Then they cut to a picture of the test paper on the Dove bar. But it’s not the same series of images showing how the paper changes over time. It’s just a static shot of the test paper on a Dove bar. The sequence clearly implies that soap is harsher than Dove but they don’t actually show how Dove affects the test paper. Does it dissolve just a little bit? Or about as much as regular soap? There’s no way to tell! That’s not a fair demonstration because it’s slanted to make you believe that Dove is better.

So what do you think, is this commercial misleading to consumers? Leave a comment and share your thoughts with the rest of the Beauty Brains community.