• Ad Age, Friday, November 3, 2006 12:45 PM

Put a compelling commercial on YouTube and watch it take off without spending a penny--that's the lesson from Dove's "Campaign for Real Beauty." The 75-second viral film, "Dove Evolution," has reaped more than 1.7 million views on YouTube as well as free coverage from talk shows such as "Ellen," "Entertainment Tonight" and "The View," and "Today."

Props should be extended to Ogilvy & Mather, the ad shop behind the spot, which created the biggest online-buzz generator in the U.S. personal-care and beauty industries. If your message resonates with consumers (like the majority of women, who don't look like supermodels), then it doesn't matter what the medium is.

The successful coverage on multiple media fronts of "Dove Evolution," which chronicles (at speed) the digital transformation of a pretty woman into a stunning supermodel, drove record traffic to Dove's site CampaignforRealBeauty.com, reaching three times as many people as the beauty care brand's expensive Super Bowl ad last year, according to traffic measurement firm Alexa.com.

The 2-year-old "Dove Evolution," whose tagline is "No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted," will roll out in 10 additional countries across the globe.

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