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The award was announced September 24 at a WPP meeting of top executives in New York.

Mindshare beat some extremely stiff competition that included every media-oriented company throughout WPP.  Among other attributes, the work was viewed by judges as an excellent example of how Mindshare overcame a particularly difficult challenge in China.

In the U.S. and Europe, Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty" was a commercial and critical success, but achieving similar results in China proved more elusive. The brand's philosophy of "real beauty" was not easily understood in China because of cultural differences that allow Chinese women to experience considerably less body image pressure than their western counterparts. Also, in China's economically mobile society, attention to beauty is a symbol of professional achievement.  As a result, any "Real Beauty" marketing effort required an additional dimension that placed it in the context of professional class and status.

Mindshare China decided that the best way to make "Real Beauty" relevant to Chinese women was to develop a Chinese version of the international mega-hit TV show Ugly Betty, set it in an ad agency, and make Dove and discussions of beauty an integral part of the show.  The partnership guaranteed minimum levels of storyline integration in terms of number of episodes and total time that would involve Dove branding. There were also guarantees for minimum amounts of product usage, product placement and background presence.

The results were fantastic: Over 50 million viewers watched the premiere of Ugly Betty and it was consistently the highest rated show in its daypart with average ratings of 5.6 percent and programme share of 8.9 percent.   Unaided awareness for Dove grew by 75 percent and sales shipments almost doubled after the first season. Finally, a 12.5 percent increase in market share was directly credited to Dove's involvement in Ugly Betty.

The bottom line was this-Mindshare's branded content partnership for Dove showed that a media solution could succeed where advertising had not, and Ugly Betty made Dove part of China's cultural conversation in a way that a regular television campaign never could.

Related links:

• WPPED Cream Site