Dove Campaign for Real Beauty

The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is a worldwide marketing/public relations campaign
launched in 2003 that includes advertisements, video, workshops, sleepover events and the
publication of a book and the production of a play. The principle behind the campaign is to
celebrate the natural physical variation embodied by all women and inspire them to have the
confidence to be comfortable with themselves. Dove's partners in the effort include such
marketing and communications agencies as Ogilvy & Mather, Edelman Public Relations, and
Harbinger Communications (in Canada). Part of the overall project was the "Evolution"
campaign.

Dr. Orbach, a visiting professor at the London School of Economics, helped conduct a global
study 3,200 women for Dove. The research found only 2% of women around the world chose
the word "beautiful" to describe their looks. She said a 1995 study in Fiji proved the negative
affect advertising and the media had on women's body image. Three years after commercial
television was introduced into the country, 12% of teenage girls were diagnosed as bulimic in
a country that had previously been free of the condition. Dr. Orbach said cosmetics
advertising needed to widen its definition of beauty away from its current narrow confines.

The Campaign

Phase I: The Dove Campaign For Real Beauty was launched by Unilever in 2003, to
coincide with the expansion of the Dove brand from soaps and other cleansing solutions to
health and beauty products in general, including deodorants, shower gels, hair-care and skin-
care products.
The first stage of the campaign centred around a series of billboard advertisements, initially
put up in the United Kingdom, and later worldwide. The spots showcased photographs of
regular women (in place of professional models), taken by noted portrait photographer Annie
Leibovitz. The ads invited passers-by to vote (by calling up a 1-800 number) on whether a
particular model was, for example, "Fat or Fab" or "Wrinkled or Wonderful", with the results
of the votes dynamically updated and displayed on the billboard itself. Accompanying the
billboard advertisements was the publication of the "Dove Report", a corporate study which
Unilever intended to "[create] a new definition of beauty [which] will free women from self-
doubt and encourage them to embrace their real beauty." While a photo in the October 25,
2004 issue of Marketing Magazine shows "fab" leading 51% to 49%, eventually the
percentage of "fat" votes overtook "fab", much to the chagrin of marketers. Other such bi-
polar categories were “flawed” or “flawless”, “gray” or “gorgeous”, and “oversized” or
“outstanding”.

Phase II: In 2005, Ogilvy & Mather created a £2.5m ad campaign to support Lever Fabergé's
Dove Firming range, which featured ordinary women instead of models. The Dove Firming
campaign attracted enormous media attention and increased product sales by 700%,
according to the brand's owner, Lever Faberge, which is a division of packaged goods giant
Unilever. The firming campaign, as it was referred to, sparked some conversation among TV
show hosts (e.g., Katie Curic).

Phase III: As part of the campaign, a commercial later referred to as Little Girls was aired as
a 30-second television spot (US$2.5M) during the Super Bowl XL (2006). This single
advertisement led to talk show hosts like Oprah Winfrey and Jay Leno speaking about the
issue (women’s perception of beauty) on their shows.
The series received significant media coverage from talk shows, women's magazines, and
mainstream news broadcasts and publications, generating media exposure which Unilever has
estimated to be worth more than 30 times the paid-for media space. Following this success,
the campaign expanded into other media, with a series of television spots (Flip Your Wigs
and the Pro-Age series, among others) and print advertisements ("Tested on Real Curves"),
culminating in the 2006 Little Girls global campaign, which featured regional versions of the
same advertisement in both print and screen.

Phase IV: By late 2006, Ogilvy & Mather were seeking to extend the campaign further, by
creating one or more viral videos to host on the Campaign for Real Beauty website. The first
of these, Daughters, was an interview-style piece intended to show how mothers and
daughters related to issues surrounding the modern perception of beauty and the beauty
industry. It was during the production of Daughters that a series of short films entitled
"Beauty Crackdown", of which Evolution was part, was pitched to Unilever as an "activation
idea."

The concept was one that art director Tim Piper, who proposed to create Evolution with the
budget left over from Daughters (C$135,000), pushed. It was originally intended to get
people to the Campaign for Real Beauty website to see Daughters, and to participate in the
workshops featured on the site.

As part of this campaign, in 2006, Dove started the Dove Self-Esteem Fund that claims to
change the Western concept of beauty from ultra-thin models with "perfect" features to
making every girl (and woman) feel positive about her looks. In an effort to promote the
Fund, Dove ordered a series of highly-successful online-based short films promoting the self-
esteem concept, which to date includes Daughters, Evolution (which went on to win a
number of honours, including two Cannes Lions Grand Prix awards), Onslaught, and Amy.
Release and Reception of Evolution

Evolution was incorporated into the Canadian Campaign for Real Beauty website on 6
October 2006 in order to coincide with the start of the Los Angeles Fashion Week, and was
uploaded by art director Tim Piper to video sharing website YouTube shortly after. While it
has remained a largely internet-based campaign, Evolution has appeared as a television
commercial in the Netherlands and the Middle East, and in the U.S. inside commercial breaks
in The Hills.

Once uploaded, the advert was viewed over 40,000 times in its first day, 1,700,000 times
within a month of its upload, and 12,000,000 times within its first year. Even without having
appeared offline, the advert was discussed by a number of mainstream television
programmes, including Good Morning America, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and The View,
and news networks such as CNN, NBC, and ABC News, with the overwhelming majority
coming out in support of the campaign's message. Spaces at the mother and daughter
workshops sold out almost immediately, and the total exposure generated through the
$50,000 piece was estimated by Ogilvy & Mather in October 2006 as being worth around
$150M. Comparisons have often been drawn up between the campaign and Dove's earlier
purchase of a 30-second spot for Little Girls during the Super Bowl XL. The Super Bowl spot
cost an estimated $2.5M, reached an audience of 500 million, and generated only one third of
the boost in traffic to the Campaign for Real Beauty website of Evolution. The spot was also
credited for its part in producing double-figure growth in sales of Dove product, and Unilever
reported that its overall sales in the period following the release of Evolution rose by 5.8%,
up from 3.9% the previous year.

Dove continues to actively engage with users on social media. The theme continues to
remains= the same, while different creatives keep the audience engaged.

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