Dove
The harmful culture of selfies – promoting girls’ futile pursuit of the perfect look - persists. Dove have been campaigning for real beauty since 2004, bringing attention to the issues that young girls face which is as important today as ever before.
Dove: Reverse Selfie
Strategy:
Dove’s mission was to raise awareness of the harmful beauty standards that affect young girls. The Dove Self-Esteem Project and its online confidence tool kit were intended to help families address ongoing societal issues with young girls’ self-esteem and perceptions of beauty -to reassert its purpose-led brand proposition and long-term brand affinity. Ultimately, this campaign aimed to teach the next generation to feel comfortable in their own skin.
We created a bespoke Body Toxicity Index (BTI) which powered our selection of media – enabling us to find audiences at their most receptive – or vulnerable – with both our TV asset and our downloadable Dove Self Esteem Project Toolkit. The toolkit, available via a QR code, comprises a series of resources to promote and maintain self-esteem (articles, tools, techniques and links to online resources). We needed to get it in the hands of those who needed it most.
Planning:
Reverse Selfie – in which a young girl transforms in reverse from impossibly made-up to her true beautiful self – brought hope, inspiration and education to millions of young women caught in this vortex. And it helped re-establish Dove as an ally for all women, with its unflinching focus on real beauty. In doing so, Dove enlisted an army of women as part of its #NoDigitalDistortion campaign. But how did we recruit that army and arm them with the tools they need to build their self-esteem.
Results:
- Business: Brand affinity increased by 21% in our target audience, with an 11.9% uplift in cross-category value sales.
- Downloads: we achieved 4000+/134% of our target downloads (key campaign KPI)
- Brand: The campaign maintained Dove’s #1 brand power position in the category (16.9% Q3 MAT 2022), with the brand power index amongst 18-34 year olds increasing from 146-148 Q3 MAT 2022.
- Media delivery: QR code scans peaked on high-indexing body toxicity programming: Love Island and Married at First Sight. The ad within Love Island also drove significant social conversation, with Love Islanders like Georgia Louise Harrison who has 1.2m followers calling out the campaign and taking action against digital distortion using the hashtag #NoDigitalDistortion, which many others also used. Our social View Through Rates were 25% vs the benchmark of 5-8%