Dove believes in celebrating beauty in its diversity and, in doing so, raising the self-esteem of women and young girls globally. Featuring real women in advertising has been an integral part of the Dove brand’s DNA—dating back to the introduction of the Dove Beauty Bar in 1957.
Dove launched the Campaign for Real Beauty in 2004 based on the findings of a major global study, The Real Truth About Beauty: A Global Report. The brand ignited a global conversation about the need for a wider definition of beauty after the study proved the hypothesis that the definition of beauty had become limiting and unattainable. In 2006, when Spain banned overly thin models from its runways, Dove responded on YouTube with a compelling short film, Evolution, depicting the transformation of a real woman into a model and promoting awareness of how unrealistic perceptions of beauty are created.
The way women see themselves is dramatically different from how others perceive them. Only 4% of women globally consider themselves beautiful and 54% agree that when it comes to how they look, they are their own worst beauty critic. In 2013, Dove conducted a compelling social experiment to bring this to life. Documented in a short film, Dove Real Beauty Sketches explores how women view their own beauty in contrast to what others see.
The film, created by Ogilvy & Mather Brazil, features an FBI-trained sketch artist drawing a woman’s portrait according to her own self-description. He then sketches a portrait of the same woman according to a stranger’s description of her. Throughout, the artist never lays eyes on the women themselves, and neither the artist nor women know about the social experiment.
Dove Real Beauty Sketches struck an emotional chord with millions of women who recognize that when it comes to how they look, the biggest beauty pressure is the pressure they put on themselves. Aggregating views across YouTube and other platforms, the film quickly became the most viewed online video ad of all time, according to Unilever, with over 163 million global views. It is also, according to Unruly Media, the most shared video ad in over a year with over four million shares across a variety of platforms, and the third most shared film of all time.