Dove's ready for men. Are men ready for Dove?

Dove's new line of skin care products for men:  Is it smart?

With a lot of whoop-la, Unilever's Dove division recently came out with a line of skin-care products for men, called Dove For Men.  Here's a commercial that the firm would like you to see and then, if you're a man, act on...

Let's get one thing straight right from the start:  I have no predisposition that Dove's new line of skin care products for men necessarily fail--but I have a feeling deep down inside of me that it will, that is, that is will fall short of marketplace success.  I've been paying attention to the media, and the men around me--and I've been talking to a few myself about exactly this--and I have a strong sense that it's a noble, well-intention attempt to help men look and feel their best but is destined to be a commercial disappointment.  Let me explain what my thoughts are.  

1. It's a logical [business] decision for Dove--but not for men--to make.  Dove's been very successful in selling to women, not men.  Because the marketing game is played in terms of careful segmentation strategies, this new line seems like a rational, logical extension of what Dove is about and does, not what's been determined men need.  In a culture sense, what is done, by all of us--even for sake of so-called beauty and personal attractiveness--is socially learned and almost entirely illogical and irrational:  women wearing high-heels, men's shaving their beard off each day, thin being preferrable to not-thin, guys shaving their heads, sporting tattoos, painting eye-liner and lip-stick.  The point is this:  Dove knows how to make beauty aids and until recently has been able to sell to half the people in a market, but now, logically, they want the other half as well.  But the other half is asked to make what for them is an illogical decision--to now care a lot for a part of their bodies they have simply taken for granted. 

2. It is a culturally-unfounded "need" that is being proposed here.  Men have--depending on who you talk to--gotten by on far fewer body care products than women or even European men for that matter.  If you ask women, men skate through life not "taking care of their skin," if they pay any attention to it at all.  It is also somewhat self-evident that European men have been more inclined than U.S. males to pamper themselves with what might be called beauty products.  In short, women see the need for this product [both for themselves and men--after all everybody has skin!]; European males on average seem to be more fastidious about these matters than their U.S. counterparts.  On the other hand, the U.S. male seems plagued by inertia, fear of being cast as a metrosexual--or, worse yet--a girlie man when they even consider, must less buy, try, and then actually apply skin-care products.

3. Dove's the wrong label to evoke a change in men's "beauty" ideas & habits.  If the time has, indeed, arrived for U.S. males to pay more attention to their appearance--and specifically, the appearance of their skin [and, obviously, I, for one, don't think so], men would need a signal for such a shift to come from a brand that they already are familiar with and "own."  Gillette seems like the most obvious  brand to give men permission they need to first consider that these new skin-care steps are appropriate and, for males, acceptable; for in-roads to male acceptance, behavior patterns in skin necessarily have to come from a trusted source by men--and that would be Gillette or some other equally established men's line of toiletries.

By contrast, Dove is identified with women and women's beauty needs; for men to "buy" the new practice, Dove has to overcome all the success it has met with in the marketplace of names, brands, and marketing icons--all associated with female needs--before it can start selling these very same ideas to men.  [BTW...If Dove really wanted to overcome many of the social and cultural impediments to marketplace success, it easily could have helped itself by presenting a new line with an independent--and potentially more manly--brand and icon.]

4. Men I've spoken to about Dove's new line don't see the point--or the need to even try it.  I was watching the Super Bowl with some young men in the 30-something years--both thought the commercial by Dove didn't make any sense--for them at least.  The first words out were "Why would a guy need to do that?"  That sort of says it all.  

Good advice in business:  don't seek alter people's behavior--if you want to be successful.

There's a maxim in marketing--and in business generally--that goes like this: you flirt with failure and financial disaster to the extent you undertake a commercial enterprise the success of which depends on changing people's behavior in a way they are presently are not engaged in nor inclined to.  I think we're seeing Dove exquisitely test that rule.  

Am I right?  I think I'm right, but I'd love to hear what both women and men think about this experiment in progress.  Comment below and let me know your POV!  

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