Dove, #KeepHerConfident
Dove’s #KeepHerConfident addresses the 45% dropout rate of girls in sports due to low body confidence. The initiative aims to keep girls in sports by fostering confidence, targeting both the girls and their parents/guardians. The campaign, anchored by the hashtag #KeepHerConfident, emphasizes positive body talk and coaching. Launched at Nike headquarters with Venus Williams and a Super Bowl spot, the campaign included a multi-channel strategy with TV and social media content, and key moments like March Madness extended the message.
Challenge
Despite increased recognition of women’s sports, teenage girls are dropping out at alarming rates, largely due to low body confidence during puberty. This major reason is often overlooked in media narratives, which tend to blame girls’ resilience, the physical nature of sports, or a lack of interest.
Dropping out further harms girls’ self-esteem, creating a vicious cycle. For 20 years, Dove has worked to improve girls’ self-esteem. Discovering this issue, Dove partnered with Nike to create the Body Confident Sport program to keep girls engaged in sports and boost their confidence.
Insight
Research commissioned by Dove found that when girls hit the age of 14, as many as 45% of them drop out of sport due to lack of body confidence. Dove wanted to empower girls by providing everyone they encountered with one phrase they could keep at the forefront of their mind, almost as a mission statement. This came to life through the hashtag #KeepHerConfident. It reminded everyone to be hyper-aware of how they talk about their body around young girls in a sport setting, how they coach young girls, and how girls react to each other while doing sport.
Idea
We used a multi-channel approach to strengthen brand power and drive saliency. The campaign launched at the Super Bowl, where we had a dedicated audience of sports fans and parents. Post-game strategy was essential to extend and reinforce the message immediately after – increasing both long term brand power, and short-term impact on the sales of key products. We also tapped into other sports related cultural moments, such as ‘March Madness’ in Q1 ’24 that were relevant to the target audience & message. Lastly, we identified areas where we could allow consumers to get involved, cultivating a two-way conversation with the brand.
Delivery
To begin we created a 6” teaser asset to announce the Dove x Nike partnership, with the Body Confident Sport program then officially launched via an in-person event at Nike headquarters in New York City, featuring sports star Venus Williams. From this event social content was created and shared to create a ground swell of support for the program. The ‘Hard Knocks’ film then followed launching at the most-watched Super Bowl ever with 123.7 million viewers.
From this spark, we secured high impact placements for Dove’s messaging on social media platforms to drive post-game conversation around the shocking dropout statistic. The #KeepHerConfident hashtag was used as the CTA for spreading Dove’s mission at scale. In parallel, we formed a unique collaboration with Pandora/SiriusXM and the female founded sports platform, Togethxr, to share stories from rising female athlete stars and self-proclaimed “Girl Dad” sports podcasters. This added a new dimension to the hero film and provided a platform for real women to share their stories.