Brand: Dove Men+Care
Manufacturer: Unilever
Agency: forceMAJEURE
After most CPG brands update their packaging and launch it to market, design often becomes an afterthought in the marketing mix. Dove Men+Care has taken a radically different approach: Package design is monitored continuously with an eye toward improving performance and driving incremental sales growth. For a brand that is already a leader in each of its categories, this focus on design as a lever of growth has increasingly drawn the attention of competitors and earned it repeated praise (and profits).
Consider that Dove Men+Care won a Designalytics Effectiveness Award in 2022 with a redesign that drove a sales increase of 17% in the 26 weeks after it was launched (compared to the same period during the prior year). Still, the brand refused to be complacent, and re-engaged with its agency, forceMAJEURE, to further improve its already best-in-class design. “In addition to established names on store shelves, it seems there are always new men’s body wash brands entering the market,” said Michelle Mak, creative director at forceMAJEURE. “Yet even as an unquestioned leader in the category, Dove Men+Care doesn’t rest on its laurels. It’s always looking to see what other brands are doing and responding to that in strategic ways.”
At the time a redesign was first being considered back in 2020, forceMAJEURE was already working with Dove Men+Care on the overall “DNA” of the brand. The team “zoomed out” and reviewed the entire brand’s ethos, which sparked renewed focus on the fundamentals—specifically on opportunities to deepen the connection with the overarching Dove brand. “The DNA project made us re-look at Dove Men+Care as a whole, and consider how it might fit with the master brand more cohesively,” Mak recalled.
There was also an unmistakable trend in the category: Men’s views on skin and body care had been changing. The proliferation of niche brands and products in the space, Mak mentioned, had been instrumental in educating men on key elements of skin care. “The American man has evolved in how they take care of themselves, and each man has different needs,” she said. “So understanding the consumer and the skin and body-care issues they struggle with was important for the brand moving forward.”
This evolution in market dynamics was reflected in the creative brief. It was agreed that a more tailored approach for each category would replace the unwavering consistency which had once defined the portfolio’s packaging. Yet, in order to maintain the brand’s standing in the market, any changes would be both subtle and strategic. “A key part of the brief was to treat body wash a little differently,” Mak noted. “If we needed to address the unique needs of men, it meant approaching each category in a new and unique way.”
Executing this vision would require taking some calculated risks, starting with the initial concepts. “We went really wide with our design routes, and I think we scared the brand a little,” Mak recalled, chuckling. “In those early stages, there were points where people said, ‘Whoa, we went a little too far.’ And that's the purpose of those early stages: to find the right balance between too far and not far enough.”
For one thing, the broad exploration helped the brand realize the centrality of color to the design. “We had created some concepts that were lacking the same splash of color that punctuated the previous design,” recalled Mak. “And it became clear that those designs weren’t working. People—both consumers and our internal teams—didn’t recognize it as Dove Men+Care without that gray structure with a bold hit of color.” So the color remained, but was revitalized with deeper hues.
Next up was the communication of key attributes, which is vital to design success. (Saying important things better has an 88% correlation to in-market outcomes, according to a meta-analysis of packaging studies conducted by Designalytics). Dove Men+Care was already dominating its competition in communicating top consumer purchase drivers, but was vigilant in maintaining that excellence. For example, it enjoyed best-in-category performance in communication with the prior design, yet still found a way to improve it dramatically. In fact, according to Designalytics’ testing, the new design bested the previous one in communicating all 12 of the most important purchase drivers in the category, and by an average of 45 points.
“Even as an unquestioned leader in the [body wash] category, Dove Men+Care doesn’t rest on its laurels. ”
Where the previous design relied solely on blocks of color, this new look introduces imagery that evokes hydration across all variants, from the calming puddle of Clean Comfort to the luminous effervescence of the bubbles on Extra Fresh (even the exfoliating Deep Clean imagery suggests hydrating qualities). “Dove Men+Care really owns moisturization in the category, so we wanted to make sure the design showed hydration textures that men would actually want to put on their skin,” Mak noted.
Words like “hydrating” and “refreshing” complement the visuals, and the brand even replaced the previous “micromoisture” claim with a more descriptive “24-hour nourishing micromoisture” callout. “We wanted consumers to know that despite the design changing, the product’s efficacy has only gotten better. It reinforces the moisture story we are telling,” said Kei Hayashi, art director at forceMAJEURE.
In the six months following the new design's launch, the brand’s body wash sales grew 7% compared to the same period the prior year.
The boldest change on the package was actually brilliantly subtle, and responsive to the aforementioned evolution in the market: breaking the vaunted “box” that had so defined the brand for years. Where the prior design was geometric and rigid, the new look was more fluid—in more ways than one. Each variant now features images that evoke fragrance and moisture, and the borders around them have largely disappeared. The outline of the “box” is still there, but it’s more open, and its contents are suggestive of the product's benefits. “Sensory cues are key for consumers, so we felt that bringing more fluidity and softness to the design was called for,” Hayashi explained. “Moving away from the more boxy visual language also allowed us to be more telegraphic about what the product actually does.”
Modifying the geometric nature of the design went beyond the box, influencing the typography as well. In the prior iteration of the packaging, the logo was all uppercase, and the team decided a change was needed. “The original font was very boxy, and we felt that aligning it with the increased fluidity of the overall design just made sense,” Hayashi noted. The agency even added color to the “plus” in the logo, making it easier for consumers to locate their preferred variant.
When the design was launched, the results once again showed that Dove Men+Care’s diligent approach to design pays big dividends. In the six months following the new design's launch, the brand’s body wash sales grew 7% compared to the same period the prior year. A quantitative consumer evaluation by Designalytics affirmed that consumers find the new look (even more) refreshing: 77% of category buyers preferred the new design for purchase to the prior design. (Across CPG categories, only 39% of redesigns improve upon the previous design at all, much less by such a wide margin.)
Mak attributes the success of the redesign to a number of things, but thinks it’s hard to overestimate how important Dove Men+Care’s forward-thinking, consumer-centric approach to design really is. “In order to compete with all these newer brands, you have to show that you hear your consumer,” she said. “You need to stick with who you are, but also show that you’re listening to people you’re creating these products for. I think Dove Men+Care’s willingness to change with the times and always be evolving is what makes them so successful.”
