Statistics show that only 4% of women actually believe they are beautiful. The biggest barrier to women’s self-perception of beauty is their own minds.
Dove’s intention via this campaign was to inspire the remaining 96% of women, to make them feel this way too.
The basis of the campaign was an experiment intending to encourage women to reconsider themselves and their beauty. In order for the campaign to reach women from all over the world it was necessary for the campaign to be talkative, and for the medium used to be contagious, fast-moving and sharable. What better way of doing this than by using women themselves?
By asking an FBI- trained sketch artist to draw a woman’s portrait according to their own self-description, Ogilvy aimed to make women and the world around them rethink real beauty and self-perception.
Firstly, the artist who never laid his eyes directly on the women instead relied on the description of strangers to create their portraits. He then sketched them again by just listening to their own description of themselves.
The two portraits looked entirely different. Women who took part in this campaign admitted that the first sketch reflected more beautiful, happier and accurate descriptions of them, striking proof that they were more beautiful than they thought they were.
Using YouTube True View Platforms, Tweets and trends on Twitter, and Facebook video-sharing along with Dove’s 14 million Facebook fans, it was ensured that the video was seen and shared online.
Results
Unprecedented levels of sharing and engagement were achieved. “Real Beauty sketches” was the most shared link in mashable.com’s history and with 1.9 million aggregated shares on Facebook. Brand Passion increased by 1000% and the link itself was responsible for over 90% of the video content shared within the peer group category.