Woman Stereotype
As hair care brand, PANTENE with its best-known product, Pantene Pro-V (Pantene Pro Vitamin), became famous due to an advertising campaign in the 1989 in which fashion models said, “Don’t hate me because I’m beautiful.” It was Kelly Le Brock (American Actress and Model) who appeared in the commercial and spoke the line. Ever since, the line became a pop-culture catchphrase for “annoying” narcissistic behavior. Additionally, they have an impressive yet memorable slogan “Strong is Beautiful” that give a reminder to the women around the world to always believe that strength is not only from outside, but also from the inside.
The Unique and Distinctive Campaign
Speaking of its slogan, it is not only as tagline for increasing Pantene’s market, but also by doing an excellent campaign that can speak-up for women in the worldwide. It is indicated by numerous campaign in the different countries. But why they make different from one country to another?
According to Hitesh Bhasin from marketing91.com, the brand features a different product depending on the needs of that specific customer base where every country the Pantene is sold. Because Pantene’s core brand identities are quality, shiny, healthy hair. Thus, it helps form a community for young women creating an image that Pantene understands them and it wasn’t just about getting the product sold. In its “Not Sorry” advertisement, Pantene chose to act beyond its product benefits and tried to communicate that with Pantene women can “shine strong”.
Asian Campaign
For example, a recent campaign in Indonesia called “Rambut Tanpa Batas” or “Limitless Hair” which featured Ayu Gani, an Indonesian Model. In the campaign ads that aired in April 2021, she shared her career in modelling and the challenge she encountered, of which she cannot choose hairstyle as she wish for and comfortable with because some clients apply some restriction for the models, including hairstyle. Thus, she encouraged women to have strong-minded and believe that whatever hair style women want, the most important is how women can be confident and keep being themselves. Either long or short hair, how women look will never ruin their life and career.
From this, we can see that celebrities are often made a victim of trolls and this campaign showed that celebrities can be as vulnerable as other women and they get hurt too and are no different.
Furthermore, still in Indonesia, Pantene also made a campaign by doing a social experiment about female students who just graduated from university and getting job afterwards. The campaign focused on stereotypes surrounding “berpenampilan menarik” (looks attractive) and its impact on a young woman’s success.
Launched throughout graduation month, this impressive campaign showed women tackle “berpenampilan menarik” as a job hiring requirement commonly found in Indonesia. Those two words are not only vague in meaning but also surrounded by personal bias and society’s preconceptions about beauty, moreover about beauty standard in particular culture. With around 500,000 female graduates every year, “berpenampilan menarik” has a potential to affect them, mainly at this stage in life where independence, success, and passion for the future are more important than ever.
Therefore, this social experiment aims to have maximum confidence with principle of #RambutTanpaBatas (Limitless Hair).
Alike in Indonesia, the campaign from Pantene China also portray female students. It is where one female student encounters “Hair Rivalry” with another female student who has shiny and strong hair. From this campaign, we know how Pantene China wants to focus on female students as its market targets, especially those who are still in the high school or under 20. Based on Campaign Asia, the focus is due to the “insight” of university life which is the first time that young people get to make their own sartorial choices after years under strict school rules, hence they might need a little education about haircare.
Europe & America Campaign
Let’s crossing to another continent, in the UK, Pantene make campaign of “My Hair Won’t Be Silenced” which represents African-descendant women who still live under discrimination and racism, including how they look with their typical curly hair. The objective of this campaign is to spread awareness to the people that any women with any ethnicity or race, they still have a right to show themselves in public.
Unlike the UK, in the United States, the campaign that they did about a year ago is depicting the life of LGBTQ by using hashtag #HairHasNoGender. Beside the market target is for women and men, even children, this campaign is deemed to be very brave in supporting LGBTQ community.
As results, Pantene uses local women to show how strong women to appear. Therefore, in each country, they do different campaigns, one theme but different story, basically adjusting to the culture in each country and its target market. With their main slogan “Strong is Beautiful”, Pantene really wants to show the world that every woman around the world is equal yet different, unique, strong, and extraordinary.