Dove is going deeper into body care with the launch of Cream Serums and a Targeted Serum Concentrate.
“The body category today is mainly driven by moisturization,” said Bérengère Loubatier, sr. global brand vp of hair and skin care at Dove. “But our consumer analysis showed that 82% of women want more. They wanted their body care to serve their specialized needs.”
The desire to address consumers’ wider body-care concerns led the Dove team to research and develop “face-grade” level body-care products. The new products focus on improving the appearance of uneven skin tone, dark spots, elasticity and stretch marks by using derm-inspired ingredients including niacinamide, prebiotic glycerin and stearic acid.
The product collection features five Cream Serums and a Targeted Serum Concentrate, each priced at $13.99. As of Wednesday, they’re available on Amazon and in-store and online at retailers including Target and Walgreens.
“Our goal is to democratize [body-care] solutions and shake up the category,” Loubatier said. “These advanced solutions could exist in prestige [retailers], but they don’t exist in the drugstore aisle.”
Two weeks before the products’ launch, Dove began posting to its social channels educational videos emphasizing the importance of ingredients in the serums and related results from the brand’s clinical studies. On launch day, Dove rolled out new assets across its social platforms, and Dove’s community of paid and non-paid creators released dedicated content.
“We’re leaning heavenly on social [for this launch] because that’s where people discover trends, and that’s where they want to see the products in action,” Loubatier said. The brand’s posts highlight the products’ efficacy and demonstrate application techniques. In the first quarter of 2025, to further promote the launches, Dove plans to host IRL experiences and OOH campaigns across the U.S.
The body care category has been on an upward trend. According to Grand View Research, in 2021, the skin-care body products market size was valued at $26.93 billion and it was expected to grow at 5.9% annually until 2028. In 2024, brands including Courteney Cox’s Homecourt, organic hair-care brand Innersense, The Ordinary and Côte have expanded into body care.
“Dove is about superior, forward-thinking care. … That’s the ambition we had when we entered this new [body-care] category. … We want to stretch the category and disrupt as we’ve done in previous categories,” Loubatier said.
In the third quarter of 2024, Dove parent company Unilever experienced year-over-year sales growth of 4.5%, to $16.1 billion. Its beauty and wellness division saw growth of 6.7% to $3.38 billion, with a particularly strong performance from Dove, CEO Hein Schumacher said in a statement.
