"Beyond Compare: Women Photographers On Real Beuty"
In 2014 Dove organized a photo exhibition in collaboration with Ogilvy featuring the work of 67 different female photographers surrounding the topic of "Real Beauty" as a first step to redefine the Beauty industry's impact on how women perceive themselves.
Campaign for real beauty
Following the Exhibition, a series of advertisements featuring a couple of checkboxes with seemingly opposite adjectives that could be used to describe the woman on the same a was launched. The idea was to challenge how we perceive certain natural body aspects, proving how the same characteristic can be perceived as negative or positive.
Real Beauty
In 2005 the famous "Real Beauty" advertisement campaign was finally launched, featuring a diverse lineup of women dressed in simple white underwear, showcasing different body types, all challenging the norm of brand communication until that day.
Real Beauty Sketches
In 2013 Dove launched a video campaign featuring a professional sketch artist tasked with drawing women first as they described themselves and then as someone else described them. This exercise showed that women tend to see themself more critically, while others focus on what makes them beautiful. "This campaign became a resounding success with millions of views on the internet.
Not every campaign was a succes
In the mids of the "Real Beauty" success, Dove stumbled a couple of times where their communication seemed to indicate that they wanted to communicate that their products turned a black woman white. For example, by positioning the black women in front of a before banner and white women in front of an after banner. This created a huge backlash even though the brand immediately apologized and removed the communication.
Self Esteem Project
Ever since the beginning of this rebranding, Dove has committed to walking the talk and creating a program to help girls grow more healthily with fewer self-esteem problems by educating and supporting them from an early age. This commitment was consolidated in the "Dove Self Esteem" project.
Nineteen years ago, Dove found a priceless piece of intel when pinpointing the fact that most women didn't identify as beautiful and decided to interpret it as a new mission for their brand. Instead of selling the promise of a product that would help you reach those oppressing standards of beauty, they committed to becoming a brand that helps women realize their natural beauty.
Starting by giving a stage to 67 different female photographers to portray their unadulterated interpretation of beauty in the "Beyond Compare: Women Photographers On Real Beuty" exhibition, followed by questioning our perception of multiple fiscal characteristics by showcasing their positive counterparts and culminating by presenting the diversity of female body that exists in a scenario formerly exclusive to standardized models, Dove truly changed the conversation surrounding beauty standards in marketing throughout multiple categories.
Their social work has always supported their commitment to this cause. The "Dove Self Esteem" program serves as the backbone for this new branding strategy with the mission to "[...] ensure that the next generation grows up enjoying a positive relationship with the way they look—helping young people raise their self-esteem and realize their full potential[..]."
Even though there have been some significant setbacks in the years of trying to extend and deepen this idealogy, Dove's commitment to keeping growing and adapting to what, in essence, is a mission to allow people to appreciate themselves independently of external influences has to solidify they Brand in the market and most notably in the consumers mind.
