Jo Swinson, Scottish Liberal Democrat MP, has clearly read her marketing case studies. In her crusade against the retouching of images by the beauty industry, Swinson adopted the template provided by Dove’s ‘Campaign for real beauty.’ She launched her own Real Women campaign in August – with the aim of trying to combat body image stereotypes by ‘injecting some realism’ into media images of women – and then set up a dedicated website and Twitter feed to recruit like-minded supporters.
The result? A P&G ad campaign, featuring an air-brushed Twiggy, has been deemed misleading by the ASA, after receiving more than 700 complaints and Swinson’s credentials as a smart political campaigner have been enhanced. A great example of how to enlist the support of the crowd to win an argument against a powerful corporation.