AntiFriday: Greenpeace subverts Dove’s backlash; etc.

A somewhat truncated (due to being out of town) look back at this week in backlashes, dissent, and critiques. [Note: Speaking of out of town, I was in planes and airports all day and this was written last night so if missed something, set me straight. On a related note: If I owe you an email about something, I’ll catch up tonight or tomorrow.]

1. As you may have read, since it’s been on a bunch of marketing blogs, Greenpeace put out a video slamming Dove. One place to see it is on Adverblog, which also links to the Dove ad called “Onslaught.”

“Onslaught,” which is worth watching if you’ve never seen it, is probably the most caustic extension of Dove’s effort to position itself as a product with an enlightened view of the nature of beauty: In surprisingly harsh terms, the video slams “the beauty industry” for the images of women it peddles (via marketing), climaxing in a startling plastic surgery montage.

Well, I guess Greenpeace wasn’t impressed with Dove’s culture-jamming sales job, and its video, titled “Dove Onslaught(er),” uses an equally in-your-face montage to illustrate the destruction of Indonesian rainforest for (it says) ingredients used in Dove products.

2. Nalgene (11/21/04 Consumed subject) has announced it will phase out products using bisphenol A, following quite a bit of anti-ness on the matter. Some retailers are simply pulling Nalgene stuff of the shelves, and now the company is being sued.

3. Advertisers themselves are in a backlashy mood this week, suggesting that proposed FTC guidelines on “behavioral marketing” rules are “too broad.” This refers to what kind of data can be collected and used to target online ads based on things like your Web searches and so on.

4. People named Sarah Marshall are backlashing against marketing for the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall (such as billboards reading “You DO look fat in those jeans, Sarah Marshall”), on the theory that it is unflattering to people named Sarah Marshall.