The trouble with a virus is that it mutates quickly. Unilever’s decision to use a viral video to launch the latest chapter in Dove’s “real beauty” campaign is ingenious but dangerous. Advertisers are fascinated by the intimacy of the internet and a two-minute video clip was seen as a perfect way of responding to parental anxiety about the beauty industry’s exploitation of young women.

Dove’s original campaign, developed by Ogilvy & Mather using non-professional models picked off the street, was an instant success. Launched in this newspaper in 2004 with a photo-feature of the “real women” by the fashion photographer Rankin, it reflected popular disgust with heroin chic - sunken-eyed and stick-thin models. Behind the campaign was Unilever’s need to lift Dove out of its backwater of middle-aged and elderly women; a product once sold through personal recommendation was suddenly centre stage.

The commercial success of the campaign is debatable. Unilever’s competitors acknowledge that “real beauty” was a brilliant idea, well-timed and well-executed, but there is uncertainty over the sales statistics. Has Unilever generated a return on its investment? The company claims that its US market share of soap bars has risen from 29 per cent to 33 per cent, but its success in haircare is less clear.

Is Unilever hypocritical? In most British eyes, the advertising of Axe/Lynx is at worst silly and vulgar, but hardly shocking. It would be easy to dismiss the North American row as yet more evidence of an inability to appreciate irony among prim New England pilgrims. More important is the question of whether it is right for profit-making companies to campaign on sensitive issues, such as child protection. Unilever has a history of enlightened capitalism, dating back a century, of which it is proud. A social conscience is one thing, but lecturing parents about potential dangers inherent in the commercial behaviour of companies, some of which are Unilever’s rivals, is quite another.

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