• by Cindy Gustafson , Columnist, June 2, 2016

Category: Media Effie: Media Idea

Client: Unilever

Agency: Mindshare (with contributing agencies VaynerMedia, Edelman, Twitter, and Davie Brown Entertainment)

Title: #SpeakBeautiful

Challenge: Dove launched the “Campaign For Real Beauty” 11 years ago during a time when the portrayal of female beauty in magazines was arguably the biggest influence on self-esteem and body confidence among women. When Dove eliminated conventional models and the use of Photoshop or retouching from its communications, it sparked a shift of thinking in the beauty marketing industry and in culture. 

While Dove made large strides elevating and celebrating women’s real beauty and confidence, 96% of women still do not consider themselves beautiful and 8 out of 10 women encounter negativity on social media that is destructive to their self-esteem. 

Social media had become the new mirror for women and young girls — 67% of women said ‘likes’ and comments shaped the way they feel about their own appearance. It was identifying that insight that ignited a bigger idea — #SpeakBeautiful, Dove’s movement to make a tangible shift in the negative tone of these conversations by inspiring women to choose positive language when they talk about beauty on social platforms.

Solution: In partnership with Twitter, we analyzed every beauty Tweet mentioning appearance, body commentary, body image, and physical self-esteem, in combination with positive or negative terms. Through our research and the Twitter data, we identified red carpet events as being the most negative time periods, with the biggest peak around the Oscars. Therefore, we made the strategic decision to launch #SpeakBeautiful on Oscar’s night.

We ran a #SpeakBeautiful anthem TVC during the Oscar’s Red Carpet show, when negativity around beauty & appearance is at an all-time high on social media. The TVC showcased actual body image tweets from consumers and included a rallying call for women across the country to #SpeakBeautiful.

During the Oscar’s broadcast, we published tweets every 30 minutes, using real-time 2015 red carpet data and data visualization to demonstrate the impact women were having by choosing to #SpeakBeautiful. Via a custom Twitter algorithm designed specifically for this campaign, Dove also identified negative tweets and sent over 800 personalized messages to women in real-time, encouraging them to #SpeakBeautiful.

We reignited the effort in the second half of the year around the VMAs on Aug. 30. We continued to illustrate the real-time shift in conversation on Twitter through custom data visualization and engagement.

Results: The Dove brand drove a radical change of tone on Twitter with decreases in negative sentiment and increases in positive sentiment.

Since the start of 2015, positive conversation around beauty has been 25% higher than the negative beauty conversation during this same time last year

Compared to Oscar’s night 2014, there were 30% fewer negative Tweets and 69% more positive Tweets about ‘self’ beauty in 2015 

There were 43% more positive 'self' beauty Tweets during the 2015 VMAs compared to the 2014 VMAs 

800 Million social impressions and 780M mentions of Dove & #SpeakBeautiful to date 

27% higher intent to purchase Dove products among people who engaged with #SpeakBeautiful content and a 17% increase in positive sentiment for the brand from 

Effie Awards are known by advertisers and agencies globally as the pre-eminent award in the marketing industry and recognize any and all forms of communication that contribute to a brand's success. Gold, silver and bronze Effie winners will be announced at the 48th annual North American Effie Awards gala on June 2 in New York.