Dove boosts advertising spend

A major new £1.1 million (€1.39 million) advertising campaign for Dove products will begin early next month. £650,000 of the spend will go on advertising a new range of Dove deodorants which will be introduced to the Irish market at the same time.

The remainder will go on Dove's familiar testimonial ads for its soaps. The market for deodorants in Ireland is worth £23.5 million annually and Elida Faberge, which is part of the Unilever Group that owns Dove, already has 60 per cent of the market with its other brands, which include Sure and Vaseline Intensive Care.

The market grew by 18 per cent last year while the volume increased by 8 per cent, which doesn't mean that thousands of Irish people have discovered deodorants for the first time, but rather that most existing users are willing to spend more on their deodorants.

Two agencies are involved in the campaign, Ogilvy & Mather on the creative and account side and Initiative Media, who are the media buyers. The campaign will appear predominantly on television on RTE 1, Network 2, TV3, Channel 4 and UTV. There will also be superlite advertising throughout the State and £50,000 of the budget will be spent on direct mail in Tesco and Dunnes Stores loyalty card magazines as well as in Unilever's own magazine, Living, which is mailed to the company's database of 600,000 Irish households.

Dove's Irish-made testimonial-type television advertisements for its moisturising soaps have recently been acquired for use in Australia, where the Irish girls were perceived to have not only perfect complexions but also to be credible.