New 'Campaign for Real Beauty' Film from Dove

Nate Elliott | October 17, 2007, 02:36 PM

We've been talking about Dove's 'Campaign for Real Beauty' for a couple years now as a great example of how to engage consumers, and I imagine we'll be talking about it for a few years to come. Because with this campaign, Dove has accomplished something amazing: it's taken ownership of the topic of women's self-esteem, and somehow repositioned itself from being part of the beauty industry (which it irrefutably is) to being one of the beauty industry's harshest critics -- and in the process, they've sold millions of pounds of beauty products. It's remarkable.

They're at it again, with a film called 'Onslaught' that looks at how young girls are overwhelmed with images and messages of false beauty. As they've done so well in previous iterations of this campaign, they again couple a great video with some meaningful follow-up action: an online community to discuss these issues, and information so mothers can talk to their daughters about self-esteem. This stuff is textbook social marketing; I think any advertiser could learn good lessons from Dove on how to successfully implement their own social marketing effort.

You can see the video (and the rest) on the Campaign for Real Beauty homepage.