A campaign for Dove from Mindshare New York won the Media Lions Grand Prix award Wednesday at the Cannes ad festival. 

The campaign, “Dove Real Beauty Redefined for the AI Era,” launched last year as part of Dove’s 20-year-old “Real Beauty” platform. 

Partnering with social media network Pinterest, users were invited to define Real Beauty by selecting their own images of women and inner beauty traits like “Brave” or “Creative.” Their choices anchored personalized, shareable videos representing what the companies called “their unique Real Beauty DNA.” 

Users were encouraged to pin their videos to personal boards—reshaping their feeds and retraining Pinterest’s AI algorithm in the process. 

The companies said the effort ultimately “ensured AI technology showcased a wider spectrum of beauty.” 

Dove through its Real Beauty platform has been committed to fighting unrealistic standards of beauty for women for two decades. Still, a survey the company did last year found that 1 in 3 women feel pressured to alter their appearance in real life due to online beauty standards.  

The Pinterest partnership launched with a homepage takeover, showcasing Dove’s Real Beauty DNA experience embedded in the platform’s search bar. This ad unit delivered 29 million impressions and drove a 336% increase in engagement across placements. 

After the one-day takeover, Dove activated in-feed static and video pins featuring authentic images of real women from its extensive image bank. These pins were aligned with popular search terms like “Gorgeous Women,” “Confident Women,” and “Perfect Skin,” reinforcing Dove’s mission to celebrate diverse definitions of beauty. 

Beyond Pinterest, Dove extended its message through a multi-channel campaign, leveraging OOH, TV, Print, Social, and Video to reach women and raise awareness of how AI can influence our perceptions of beauty. 

The campaign delivered 787 million impressions, beyond expectations set at the beginning of the campaign. 

Brand lift studies reported a lift for message associations of Dove’s “Real Beauty” values across various platforms (Pinterest, Amazon Prime, Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and Roku). 

The Real Beauty content on Pinterest reached 27 million people. Women reported 21.4% higher engagement rates with the custom experience versus Pinterest benchmarks.  

 "Dove has embraced the very technology that is distorting the notion of real beauty in today’s media ecosystem and partnered with a platform to not only generate and showcase content for women that elevates a more authentic version of real beauty but also serves as a source of highly impactful media for the brand across multiple channels and in commerce,” stated Media Lions Jury President Dan Clays, CEO, Omnicom Media Group, EMEA.  

Dove and its agencies have won nearly two dozen Lions for the brand’s Real Beauty platform. Two years ago, a Dove campaign that protested a TikTok filter (called Bold Glamour) for perpetuating unrealistic standards of beauty also won the Media Grand Prix.