Today’s buzz concepts “engage the audience” and “create conversations” can present a challenge to some companies who are unsure how to involve their customers in defining their brand. Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty meets that challenge by affirming that beauty is not what Madison Avenue tells women that it is. Dove’s definition of “Real Beauty” includes every woman regardless of her height, weight or figure.

Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty starts with a seemingly easy premise: Reach out to the widest possible audience with a proposition that speaks to their concerns. Self-esteem building for all women was the key message, with Dove selecting 6 women from all walks of life to embrace the variety of ways beauty can be represented. Beauty industry stereotypes are criticized as harmful to a woman’s well-being. Dove’s multi-channel campaign spans the media spectrum including videos, public transportation signage, town hall meetings, panel discussions and online forums. At each point the “Real Beauty” message resonates to all women. Dove expanded the campaign to reach out to pre-teen and teen girls; making the message of esteem building a universal campaign theme.

The key to the Dove campaign’s success was that Dove reached out to the widest possible audience. They created an atmosphere of inclusiveness, which by its very definition, encourages participants to share and identify with the “real beauty” concept. Through this initiative, using Dove products becomes part of an overall experience that simultaneously brings attention to the Dove brand and to the idea of real beauty, that’s inclusive for all women. The Dove initiative continues to build momentum with its own website, campaignforrealbeauty.com, and focuses on multiple engagement opportunities on and offline to encourage self-esteem in women of all ages, body types and walks of life.

“Engaging with consumers” is a popular buzz phrase today. But with blogs, forums, Twitter and texting widespread, consumers are now effectively in control of your brand - like it or not.

What happens when the unthinkable occurs? Delta Air Lines and Dell Computers are two companies that have experienced the wrath of indignant customers armed with advanced publishing platforms. Another company is the Kryptonite Bike Lock Company, which in September 2004 learned that some of their locks could be picked with simple Bic pens. (While early reporting alleged that Kryptonite only learned of the blog-based buzz when the New York Times posted a story, Donna Tocci, Public Relations Manager for Kryptonite, more recently told Dave Taylor that the company had been “aware of the Internet involvement with this issue from the first day. This included blogs and forums.”)

Kryptonite had to deal with the situation fast — and their response should serve as a primer on outstanding customer service and company reputation-management. The crisis was two-fold for Kryptonite: They needed to 1) replace malfunctioning products while 2) quelling rumors that their company was unresponsive to consumer needs.

According to Tocci, Kryptonite did everything they could to ensure that their corporate response to the Bic pen unlock episode was rapid and global in scope. Timing and execution allowed the company to distribute over 380,000 replacement locks to customers worldwide. Tocci said that Kryptonite quickly set up a synergy among distributors, retailers, factories, shippers and fulfillment houses to ensure that customers were able to get replacement locks within weeks of the first mention of a problem in an online forum.

Tocci crystalizes the lessons that can be learned from her company’s experience: “They [companies] do need a good crisis management plan no matter who they are or how they choose to implement it.”

The takeaways from this incident transcend blogs and blogging, and offer critical insights into what being a responsive company really means; no matter which medium is used to reach customers.