Dove: Thumbstopping Beauty Biases
As millions of people committed beauty tests through their words on social media and chat apps, Dove’s unique intervention reminded them that all sizes, colours and hair types are beautiful, making them think twice every time they typed a body shaming message or comment
Millions of young girls in India are subjected to beauty stereotypes every day which can impact their self-esteem.
A Dove study proved that the biggest test Indian girls face in their school years is the beauty test, with Indians being the youngest to reach mobile maturity globally, these beauty tests have found their way into conversations online with friends, family and followers.
Dove wanted to make the online audience mindful of their words when speaking to young girls, so we turned the very medium used to body shame them into their first line of defense. Using the predictive AI technology present in smart keyboards, we identified users who are typing body shaming comments and delivered a thought-provoking message to them before they pressed send.
To build this real time intervention we analysed 61 million body shaming interactions across the Internet and identified three broad forms of body shaming: colour, hair and size. A contextual message was crafted for each of these forms – Thumbstopping beauty biases at the moment of truth. Clicking on these messages took users to the Dove Self-Esteem Project, a learning hub that offers tools and resources to help build beauty confidence.
In less than a month this innovation organically delivered Dove’s message to millions of people who were caught in the act of conducting their next beauty test.
Top media journalists took notice and helped us garner over 854,000,000 impressions and €130,000 in earned PR.
As beauty tests across the country reduced, the brand love grew. This unique intervention directly influenced millions of interactions with young girls, literally stopping beauty tests one conversation at a time.