To do this, Dove brings in traditional web design strategies such as size, shape and color to direct viewers to multimedia content, such as videos, images, and written rhetoric for the cause.
When persuading an audience via a website, the authors of the website have two jobs. The first is to create the environment in which the viewer will be most receptive to suggestions. Second, they must make those suggestions convincingly with whatever tools they can, whether that be visuals and videos, or words.
Visually, Dove Movement is effective and almost always keeps its target audience in mind with web layout, images, and videos. The text passages included in the website are heartfelt and moving, but often lack clarity and specificity, choosing to rely largely on pathos rather than logos.
So how persuasive is this website? In order to decide, you must first understand what Dove does to target its specific audience (mothers) and the emotional appeals it makes to them. After doing so, you will come to the same conclusion that I have: Dove is a master of multimedia rhetoric!
Web Layout: Setting The Stage
Whether you notice it or not, web design has a huge impact on your reaction to a web site. Colors, shapes, images, and even font size can be used to direct and grab our attention. Dove grabs not only the generic person’s attention, but female care givers specifically. It is only when Dove has its audience’s full attention that it can begin to give its arguments for why individuals should join the movement.
Colors
This website uses a predominantly light blue color scheme. The color blue is significant for many reasons. One: Dove’s mother site is dark blue, so the blue serves as a visual reminder of the connection between the two sites. Two: Blue is associated with feelings of trust and serenity. These feelings make the viewer more susceptible to persuasion and therefore more likely to join the movement.
◊✩Shapes✩◊
The basic layout for this webpage consists of a series of boxes over a shaded background. These rectangles have rounded edges, avoiding sharp corners. These shapes, coupled with the color blue, establishes the “persona” of the website. Dove is now established as a gentle and nurturing cyber mother! This persona encourages viewers to exhibit similar qualities and nurture girls and their self esteems. It also builds confidence in Dove’s sincerity.
Images
There are two main images of women with children on the site. This clearly indicates that it is mothers who Dove is targeting their campaign towards. One of these is a Caucasian woman and child and the other of an African American mother and child. Thus, Dove includes multiples ethnicities in their target audience. By showing multiple ethnicities, Dove expands the audiences ability to relate to these images because the audience is physically able to see the similarities between themselves and these pictures.
The Arguments:
Clearly, The Dove Movement is deeply invested in creating the ideal environment for its target audience (mother figures) to be persuaded. But what are they being persuaded to do? The Dove Movement asks all women to Join The Movement (joining involves a quick questionnaire, writing your advice to a 13-year-old, and giving your email address) and thereby commit to building girls’ self worth.
Because Dove has chosen an online format, they are able to use multimedia videos, a blog, as well as a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page to make their arguments. These persuasive tools rely predominantly on pathos, but logos is also present.
The Video
Watch it Here!
The single most persuasive tool on this website is a short video that depicts a mother figure and two young girls. This video shows a five-year-old girl who’s embarrassed to have dimples. The girl shares her feelings and another girl near her age tells the first that she thinks her dimples are cute. Through out the video, an adult woman (who we assume is a mother or similar role model from the context) presides over this.
This video is persuasive because it clearly depicts both the problem, low self esteem in girls, and the solution, a supportive dialogue to boost self esteem (preferably created and presided over by a mother).
Because the children in the video are younger the viewers are naturally more protective of them. Psychologically, the children are also cuter and more appealing than older children, making adults more inclined to help them. Thus, this video employs pathos to appeal to the nurturing and caretaker specific audience by showing the audience how their actions can benefit these girls and appealing to the protective feelings of the audience. This argument is most effective for mothers, and adults in similar caretaker positions. Again, Dove is tailoring its content towards its target audience.
The Blog
It is here that Dove issues the challenge to spend 60 minutes with a girl and talk about beauty and self esteem with them. This is effective because it appeals to logos; the phrase “only sixty minutes” seems like a small amount of time with the use of diction”only”. Using minutes instead of hours adds to this illusion. Dove argues that taking this challenge will not interfere with viewers busy lives, so they should be free to take up the cause.
The blog also includes small narratives on how negative self esteem has influenced women’s lives. Dove again calls upon pathos by reminding viewers of their past feelings of low self esteem and inadequacy and creating sympathy for the writer. The nurturing viewer will then (Dove hopes) feel an obligation to raise others’ self esteems by taking the challenge (and joining the website).
The FAQ
The Frequently Asked Questions page does a fantastic job pinpointing the specific questions of their audience. Questions range from “What is the Movement?” to “What does joining the Movement actually do?”
Unfortunately, the answers to these questions are not as specific. Instead they rely on generalizations that fail to answer the the questions. For example, in response to “What does joining the Movement actually do?”, Dove replies (paraphrased) ‘You will become part of a community making a difference on issues of self-esteem and real beauty’ .
This answer sounds appealing. It argues makes the reader feel important because they have the opportunity to make a difference by joining the community. However, it fails to clarify what kind of community and what actions will make a difference.
Dove is not taking the opportunity it has here to answer questions, but instead pushing sentiment heavy slogans from its website to encourage viewers to join the cause. These sentiments fail to logically answer questions, instead using vague pathos.
This may be because the aim of the Dove Movement itself is vague. Dove wants to establish a dialogue between young girls, adolescents, and their mothers; but it wants the viewer to figure out how to do that. Therefore, the site has few specific goals and resources other than the Self Esteem Weekend.
Conclusion: Is the Dove Movement Website Persuasive?
To the analytical mind, the lack of logos appears to be a giant hole in the Dove Movement’s rhetoric. However, this is not a hole, but a conscious choice. Dove is tailoring its web design and content towards mothers. The instinct to nurture and care for children (one of the defining characteristics of motherhood) is not typically a decision of logic, but of maternal feeling and desire. Emotions, not cool calculated logic, are what drive affectionate parenting.
Therefore, it makes little sense to appeal to logos! Instead, Dove stimulates emotional reactions to its website through visual layout and carefully selected persuasive pieces such as videos, blog, et cetera.
The Dove Movement For Self Esteem is a masterful demonstration of how use of rhetoric should be tailored for each specific audience. From the color blue up to the written word on the page, Dove engineers every detail to persuade its audience. Forgoing logos for pathos with gentle edges and colors Dove has carefully convinced its audience to join.
When considered in its entirety, it can be unsettling to realize how careful visual stimuli can influence our receptivity to persuasion. It is therefore of tantamount importance that we understand how rhetoric is used in a multimedia setting. If we understand what tools are being used to convince us, we can then evaluate the argument itself objectively. This increases our own power to make our own decisions without manipulation. Dove’s use of persuasion is for a good cause: helping girls raise their self esteem, but this is not always the case.
Next time you watch, read, or see something, evaluate it. How is it persuading you towards one action or another? Then ask yourself: Should it?
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