Growing a Customer-Centric Organization with Groundswell

    Every woman needs to watch this video, RIGHT NOW, if you haven't already.

    I have to admit, my eyes are a bit wet while watching this video. Women are so used to be critical of their looks. Things like body shape, hairstyle, wrinkles can bother us as long as we let them. But in the most ingenious way, Dove is trying to tell women: don't be your own worst critic. You are beautiful the way you are. More than  50 million people viewed this video within 12 days of its release. To date, Real Beauty Sketches has generated over 180 million views online.

    The video is a part of Dove's Real Beauty Campaign in 2013. When we look at some of Dove's earlier campaigns, it's easy for us to take them for granted. But keep in mind, it was over 15 years ago, and Dove's move was really a revolutionary one to go against the industry norm of using young, skinny, perfect models. Dove went with average, everyday women. In 2006, Dove launched the video "Evolution" on YouTube, and it sure became something of a stir. As Li and Bernoff mention in the book, the 75-second video caused a surge of traffic to Dove's For Real Beauty Web site--- more than double what Dove's 2006 Super Bowl ad drove. 

    The Super Bowl commercial caused Dove $2.5 million to air.

    The "Evolution"? ZERO.

    Talking about the power of groundswell.

    

    In the previous chapters, Li and Bernoff have shown us the essential skills companies need to survive in the groundswell, such as listening to the groundswell, talking, and energizing the groundswell. And finally, we have the opportunity to witness the transformation that groundswell can bring to a giant like Unilever through the Dove case. Li and Bernoff offer us three lessons learned from the case:

• Take small steps that have a big impact.
  
• Have a vision and a plan.
• Build leaders into the plan.

    Dove's plan is to send out an innovative message to customers. Their plan isn't to push the message to audiences by repeating, "you are beautiful" over and over again. Instead, they took small steps, such as launching creative commercial videos, rethinking video distribution, and teaming up with reality TV shows. A series of successes made their message became way more powerful than screaming, "you are beautiful."

    The second lesson learned, vision, and a plan is what I think the most important one in the Dove case. As Li and Bernoff say, Dove has a vision of the kind of conversation they want to have with their customers, not in just one campaign. It has been over 15 years since Unilever first launched the Real Beauty campaign, and they've successfully built the public image they wanted at the beginning. 

    Thanks to the clear vision Dove had before entering the groundswell, they have extended the campaign from women to men and launched the RealStrength campaign on Father's day in 2015. Here's a video:

    Okay, Dove, You've got to stop making me cry!

    

    Finally, I want to end with a cute story I saw from Weibo, aka Chinese Twitter. It was originally posted by a user on another rating app in China, something like Yelp, on the Disney Shanghai page. I think it echoes well with Li and Bernoff's mention of the power of Twitter.

    The parents brought their daughter to Disney in Shanghai, but the little girl lost her favorite toy in the parking lot. It was the toy she brought everywhere to, eats with it, sleeps with it. The parents tried but couldn't find the toy anywhere, and had to give up. On the way home, their daughter cried and said, my toy couldn't talk or move. Otherwise, she would answer me when I was looking for her. "I felt like my daughter's childhood was about to end without the toy," said the father in the post.

    To make their daughter feel better, her parents bought the same toy, made it look a bit worn and dirty like the original one, and brought it to the Lost and Found at Disney and asked if they can pretend to give the toy back to the little girl a week later. At first, Disney wouldn't take the toy because the park rule doesn't allow holding visitors' belongings. But when the staff heard the story, they understood and agreed to the request.

    A week later, the little girl and her parents came to Disney and asked if they have found her toy. Her parents were so nervous, they were afraid the staff at the desk would forget about the story or hand the toy to their daughter too quick, and the little girl would see through their "lie."

    None of that happened. Staff at the desk carefully collected the information about the lost toy, took a careful look at the picture, and went to the back looking for the toy. The staff returned with the "fake" toy, a new Monster Inc. toy, and a letter. They told the little girl that her guarding angel found her toy on the day it got lost. It must experience quite an adventure in the park because a new friend came back with it!

    The story became so popular, it was retweeted over 30 thousand times on Weibo, with over ten thousand comments. I quickly went through the comment section, many people were saying things like, "this is the magic of Disney!", "This is why I love Disney so much!".

    From a communication major student's perspective, this is really the magic of groundswell.