A couple days ago, as I was checking out the latest view-count for the Dove “Onslaught” video on You Tube, I stumbled upon a video that took the “Self-Esteem” campaign to task. The video—which included bits and pieces from “Onslaught”—called out Unilever for its alleged hypocricy: The same company that owns Dove and its “Campaign for Real Beauty,” which decries the expectations the beauty and advertising industry force on young girls—also owns Axe, the men’s skin-care line that uses those very same images to sell its product.

Here’s the video:

I’ve been thinking ever since I saw the video about my response. Interestingly, Sarah Wurrey from CustomScoop posted about a video that makes exactly the same case in with a little less bashing over the head:

The LA Times was all over this, too, reporting on The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood’s letter-writing campaign aimed at yanking the Axe ad campaign.

The Netherlands-based Unilever is a massive corporate entity, generating $52 billion in sales last year with 189,000 employees contributing to the effort worldwide. Those employees report to a variety of business units and divisions, ranging from Lipton to Slim Fast. The company even owns its own tea and oil plantations. Like many large companies (this one is a joint venture) many of the brands in its portfolio were added by acquisition. Most of the brands continue to operate as companies.

AdAge’s Bob Garfield makes a valid point when he asks, “What happens when Dove sales begin to flag and market share begins to slide? That will be the test of true righteousness. Does the ‘Campaign for Real Beauty’ then get disposed of, like last year’s fashions, or dubiously ‘enhanced,’ like a pair of fake breasts?”

But Garfield’s point doesn’t diminish the validity of the Self-Esteem campaign or the people working for Dove who brought it to the marketplace. To suggest otherwise is no different than claiming hypocricy when someone on Fox News asserts a disdain for a business practice praised by the Wall Street Journal and dismissed as irrelevant on MySpace: All are owned by News Corp., but each is an independent operation. The portfolio of the owners doesn’t necessarily render the values of a business it owns are insincere merely because they conflict with the values of another brand in the portfolio.

This wasn’t always an issue, back in the days when only a few companies reached behemoth proportions (think Standard Oil). But today, when “grow or die” is the business mantra, the fact that a holding company has acquired businesses that take different approaches to everything from marketing to business ethics doesn’t mean that cynical hypocricy was involved. Dove is a distinct brand that happens to be owned by Unilever, and I continue to applaud the company’s efforts. The fact that, way up the ladder, the company that owns them also owns Axe doesn’t diminish the message—or the sincere people who created and delivered it—at all.