Thanks for making me think deeper. I guess how one feels about it comes down to personal values and expectations for corporate values. I’m certain you are very right that there are a lot of people that couldn’t care less, they just want clean dishes and cute fuzzy animals.

Judging by the numbers for GoodGuide.com and the number of people that have downloaded the GoodGuide iPhone app, though, as well as the comment string on this spot on YouTube, I believe a growing number of people do care and do make brand judgements based on actual corporate integrity. Or maybe that’s just idealistic thinking on my part. Having a rare Pollyanna moment, of sorts.

From a strictly advertising POV – the spot is great. Draws you in, makes you feel good about Dawn and directly ties back and reinforces Dawn’s key point of differentiation — cuts grease better than other dish washing liquids.

But then you have the whole PETA product testing side of the house.

Which begs the question — how many Dawn users really care about product testing. Sure, there is that vocal minority that actually care, follow and probably make purchasing decisions based on such things, but if you look at the size of the CPG/Beauty segment where animal testing occurs, you pretty quickly figure out that the majority of American’s really aren’t that worried. They still purchase those goods.

So if the marketing dept’s job is to generate purchase, did Dawn really make a mistake? Or maybe they just decided that they could further leverage fence sitters –those that like to feel like they are buying things for a greater cause but don’t actually take the time to do that heavy background research like you did above.

What do you think?
@TomMartin