Dove did something similar from a different angle. In 2004 most beauty brands were still running the same playbook; flawless models, retouched skin, the same aspirational imagery repeated fir decades. Dove ran a global study and found that only 2 percent of women worldwide described themselves as beautiful. So instead of running the same ads with a softer tagline, they dropped the professional models entirely and used real women, unretouched. It became one of the most talked about campaigns in advertising history, and it built a following that felt personally connected to what the brand stood for, not just what it sold.
This may work at the initial stage of brand promotion, but then everything goes back to normal. That’s why social media is filled with perfect figures and faces (even if they’re using filters). Because no one wants to look unattractive, let alone ugly, even if it’s natural. Natural doesn’t mean attractive at all!
And in reality, the widespread use of plastic surgery and the availability of operations have made beauty an everyday commodity. So this kind of branding method: “cosmetics for natural ugliest” is unlikely to work now, 20 years later. Well, at least in Russia.
Neither brand won by copying the market leader. They won by building something the market did not already have a name for, some that's quite unique, whether big or small, and then letting their audience decide it belonged to them too. That is the part most brands skip. A logo or a colour palette is easy to copy. A culture that people want to be part of is not.
Well, at the very least, Samsung benefited from copying a lot of things from Apple. Even despite the legal disputes that lasted several years, Samsung gained a lot by copying Apple’s design innovations and some interface elements. So copying isn’t a dead‑end path at all - quite the opposite, in fact. Actually, there’s an even larger example: China has achieved its current position thanks to copying in a broad sense!
