Innovation Spotlight: Dove Men+Care FIFA World Cup Body & Face Wash

Welcome to Innovation Spotlight! Each month we’ll spotlight a brand that’s capitalizing on a current consumer trend with a new product innovation.

This month we researched Dove Men+Care FIFA World Cup Body & Face Wash, a line of limited-time World Cup-inspired combination body and face wash. Read on to get our analysis of the product's in-market potential, the audiences it appeals to, as well as what you can learn from it to innovate smarter.

The Dove Men+Care FIFA World Cup body and face washes are a limited-edition range designed to combine effective cleansing in one simple step. The collection features face-and-body formulas that hydrate while they clean, alongside a variety of fresh, sporty fragrances inspired by the energy of the FIFA World Cup. 

They have bold, soccer-themed packaging in red, white and blue colors and scent names inspired by the game, including: 

• All-Star Comfort

• Striker Swag

• Fresh Victory

• Moon Oasis

• Mango Cedarwood

Unilever is an official FIFA World Cup sponsor, and these body and face washes are part of a larger strategy to connect the Dove Men+Care brand to the event — including additional product lines like solid and spray antiperspirants. 

We’ve seen displays in stores featuring the products, multiple ads tackling different product and brand messages, and each product features a QR code that offers the chance to win tickets to the World Cup. It’s a large-scale coordinated activation around a massive, global sporting event.

This is the first time Dove Men+Care is activating around the World Cup, so we were interested to see what the brand would do.

While there are many brands adapting their packaging to align with soccer imagery or US team colors, we were impressed that Dove Men+Care took things a step further with their FIFA World Cup products by including soccer-inspired scent names. 

Do scents like “All-Star Comfort” and “Fresh Victory” appeal to consumers? Let’s find out!

1. Personal care can tie into big sports moments with innovation too: New, limited-time products connected to major sporting events tend to be focused in food and beverage categories. Those are the categories of sports. And we’ve seen a lot of great innovation in those categories for the World Cup this year so far. But skin care, especially body wash and deodorant, can easily be connected to sports too! Athletes and fans alike want to get clean and smell fresh. The brand’s ad campaigns do a great job tying Dove Men+Care products to the World Cup on a functional and emotional level, and these products take that message into retail displays and ultimately consumers’ houses and showers. It’s a connection that works and doesn’t feel forced! 

2. Appealing to casual/non-soccer fans and men and women alike: Naturally, these body and face washes appeal to serious soccer fans more than they do to the average consumer. But it’s notable that these products still score well on both breakthrough and trial potential overall, among a representative group that includes both men and women. With a national rollout like this, Dove needs to pique the interest of more than just the most passionate soccer fan to be successful. These products do that with fun scent names that evoke soccer vibes and a competitive spirit, but are still general enough to avoid signaling that they aren’t for casual fans. And the red, white and blue pack designs stand out and signal national pride in a way that any American can enjoy. It’s a great lesson for brands looking to tie into a sporting event on how to reach beyond serious fans to sell enough units to achieve a successful limited-edition product launch. 

3. A strong, trusted brand will take you far: In our research at Zappi, consumers cannot touch, or in this case, smell, the product. So it’s notable that a lot of respondents in our analysis were sure that the body and face washes would smell good. That comes from prior experience with the Dove brand — many noted that they love Dove and trust the brand. Clearly, a big part of the reason consumers want to try this product comes from the Dove brand name. Investment in long-term brand building pays off — and Dove is one of the best in the world at doing that.

Dove Men+Care FIFA World Cup Body & Face Washes scored in the top 5% of US personal care innovations on breakthrough potential and the top 20% on trial potential — putting it at the top of our database in the “scale and sustain” section of our matrix.

An amazing result! Let’s unpack more about why this innovation scores this way.

We use two key measures to determine breakthrough potential:

1. How different a product is (distinctiveness)

2. How superior a product is compared to what’s already available in market (advantage)

The body and face washes are seen as more distinctive than average (Distinctiveness T2B: 70.3% vs 64.7% norm). 

Interestingly, though these are products targeted to men, both men and women are nearly aligned in how distinctive they see the body and face washes, with men only slightly beating out women in distinctiveness (71% for men, 69% for women).

The main difference comes whether or not someone is a soccer fan. Soccer fans (defined as those who watch soccer at least a few times a month), view the face and body washes as much more distinctive (84%) — only beaten out only by early adopters (93%). 

We see the same pattern in advantage. The face and body washes outperform the average in advantage (Advantage: 63.3% vs. 52.4%), and there is no major difference across genders (64% for men, 63% for women). 

Yet soccer fans see the products as much more advantageous than the average (85%), beaten out again by early adopters (96%).

This shows that those who are either closer to soccer or closer to the skincare category are more likely to consider these products as distinctive and advantageous, which makes sense!  

There are similar results in purchase likelihood. Nearly two-thirds of people say they are likely to purchase the body and face wash collection at its current price (Priced Purchase Likelihood T2B: 64.5% vs. 52.5% norm). There is no difference in Priced Purchase Likelihood and Unpriced Purchase Likelihood, which means that price is not a barrier to purchase here. 

That priced purchase likelihood number jumps to 71% for men and drops to 58% for women — understandable considering this is a men’s brand. 

And both soccer fans and early skin care adopters are the most interested — with 84% of soccer fans and 91% of early adopters saying they would be likely to purchase at the current price.

Which scents are the most appealing? As we tend to see in men’s personal care products, the scent names are not descriptive of what the product smells like. When we asked which one respondents would be most likely to buy the first time they purchase the product line, “Fresh Victory” and “All Star Comfort” came out on top. 

Interestingly, the scent that is most descriptive (Mango Cedarwood), was the least likely to be chosen! 

This ranking order remains largely the same when we look specifically at soccer fans, with “Fresh Victory” in first and “All Star Comfort” in second. But “Striker Swag” moves up to third for soccer fans in place of Moon Oasis. 

While terms like “victory” and “all-star” can apply more broadly outside of sports, “striker” is the word that is most sports-specific. “Striker Swag” likely appeals more to soccer fans than the average person since it’s a more soccer-specific name. 

It was clever of Dove Men+Care to pick several scent names that are relevant to the sport, but general enough to appeal to a broad audience!

Great scent and fun names (biggest driver)

Despite the fact that respondents couldn’t smell these face and body washes, the products were repeatedly praised for smelling good. They were described as refreshing, clean and “manly” scents and the variety of scents was seen as a positive. 

Many also noted that the names were fun and relevant for the World Cup.

People said things like: 

• “I like the different names of the fragrances.”

• “A good variety of scents.”

• “Dove’s scents are always phenomenal.” 

• “I like that it comes in many different fragrances inspired by the World Cup.”

• “I like the catchy names.”

Strong brand trust

The expectation of great-smelling products likely stems from the strong trust we saw for the Dove brand. Dove is widely viewed as reliable and high-quality. Many said they already use or love Dove products and it is a familiar and trusted household name.

People said things like: 

• “I am a fan of Dove products, I love Dove.”

• “Dove is a great brand.”

• “A great men’s brand.” 

• “I like the brand, it's been a trusted brand for years.”

• “The name Dove spells quality for me.” 

And though this brand is targeted to men, many women in our study noted that they would buy the products for their husbands, boyfriends or sons. Dove also offers women’s personal care products — and has spent several decades tackling issues pertaining to women’s beauty standards in its long running “Real Beauty” campaign —  so the brand is still familiar and loved by women even within the “Men+Care” sub-brand.

Packaging & FIFA World Cup tie-in

The packaging and design were praised, with people liking the bold red, white and blue colors, the sporty look and the FIFA World Cup branding. The bottles were described as attractive, modern and masculine. 

As a plus, the limited-time nature of the FIFA partnership made the body and face washes more exciting, relevant and limited-time.

People said things like: 

• “I like the bold red and blue design with a star which looks eye-catching and sporty.”

• “I like the vibrant colors.”

• “I love the patriotic stars.”

• “I like that Dove is affiliated with the World Cup and has packaging and fragrances to celebrate that fact.”

• “I like the QR code to scan for a chance to win tickets--cool.”

Moisturizing & gentle

Finally, people liked that the body and face washes were non-drying and good for daily use. They mentioned the moisturizing and nourishing ingredients directly, and they perceived the products as gentle. 

People said things like: 

• “I like that it's paraben-free and sulfate free.”

• “Leaves skin soft and fresh.”

• “It’s nice and soft on the skin.”

• “I like the fact that it has micromoisture technology to keep skin hydrated.”

The moisturizing nature of these body and face washes clearly comes through in the packaging and description. We see that “hydrating,” “gentle” and “can be used daily” were the top attributes associated with the collection.

This all ties in perfectly with the brand’s FIFA World Cup ads, which use the tagline “Care for your skin like you care for the game.” One ad even calls out the functional benefits of Dove Men+Care products (noting they won’t “burn your balls”). 

The fact that Dove Men+Care offers gentle, hydrating skincare is a core message in this campaign and it is coming through in these products. 

Ultimately this is a strong line of products from Dove Men+Care, and a smart way to use timely innovation to stay top-of-mind for consumers.

Looking to understand how consumers will respond to your new innovation ideas before launch? You can test and optimize your innovative new concepts with Zappi’s connected Innovation System. Get a demo to learn more.

And to make sure you never miss one of our Innovation Spotlights, subscribe to our LinkedIn newsletter.