Crisis Communication Stages of Dove 2017 Racism Issue

Abstract

Dove's body lotion advertisement on Facebook posted in 2017 was accused of racism issue. The advertisement was a three second GIF of three women removing their shirts. The public was triggered by the scene of a black woman removed her shirt and turned into a white woman. Dove then apologized directly after the unexpected issue went viral. In 2018, Dove then created an advertisement with Let's Break the Rules of Beauty as their tagline as an attempt to rebrand their brand. The advertisement emphasized the meaning of beauty: skin color, hair style, and any other physical appearances do not define beauty. This journal discusses the racism issue of
Dove 2017 advertisement and Dove 2018 Let's Break the Rules of Beauty advertisement as an attempt to rebrand their brand also the correlation within the issue and Crisis Communication Stages framework. This journal found out that in facing their issue, Dove applied five stages of crisis communication: detection, prevention or preparation, containment, recovery, and learning. The gap of this journal is there is no study about how Dove rebrand their company's image and facing the crisis was found.