I'm simply amazed at the amount of buzz generated by the campaign, and I think simply for that it should be considered a success. Look at us, a bunch of jaded ad brats discussing the details of what exactly this firming lotion does. I want to buy it, and I am a man who's not really even sure if firmer skin is desirable or not. As mentioned above, it's not as if Ogilvy/Dove chose to run the campaign for non-profit reasons, so who really cares what the ads mean in a deeper sense in terms of women's bodies, etc.? We'll leave that to the culture critics (okay, I only half mean that, but in this post I only have enough time to deal with the ad side of things). They have achieved their purpose as ads, and have been of a higher quality than so many lame campaigns recently. Unlike so many super bowl commercials, I think people will remember not only the ads from the campaign but the brand as well, if only because the ads require the viewer to fill in the missing information and ask questions like we have asked: What does firming lotion do if these women aren't skinny? Maybe that's the biggest success of the campaign, just getting across the message that this stuff isn't supposed to make you skinny...although that point doesn't seem to have sunk in, at least not into the minds of the men quoted here. But how about the target audience? Just by way of illustrating the point, open any women's magazine. Imagine a canned ad from L'Oreal or whatever, with just another beautiful model selling firming lotion. Now it would fit neatly into a well-known and over-used category of advertisements that every human past puberty largely dismisses. In a visual culture full of cliches and boring ads, the Dove campaign stands out. Oh, and Roeper's an f-ing idiot.