Dove’s Reverse Selfie: The anatomy of a campaign
Julia Cieslak, alumna of the Sookio Bootcamp, dissects Dove’s Reverse Selfie campaign. What made the campaign so impactful? Let’s find out.
By the age of 13, 80% of girls distort the way they look online. Together with the marketing agency Ogilvy, Dove set out to change this heartbreaking reality in a hard-hitting new campaign called ‘Reverse Selfie’.
Since its launch in April 2021, the campaign has been a huge success. The campaign video has 750,000+ views on YouTube and 870,000+ views on Instagram. The press and public have responded positively, calling the campaign “powerful” and “beautiful”.
Dove and Ogilvy’s beautiful relationship
The beauty brand has been working with Ogilvy since the 1950s, when the agency’s founder, David Ogilvy, marketed Dove’s soap as one that “creams your skin while you bathe”.
Since then, their relationship has resulted in a series of campaigns advocating for real beauty, including an award-winning film, ‘Dove Real Beauty Sketches’, as well as ‘#StopTheBeautyTest‘ and ‘Courage is Beautiful’.
The concept of the reverse selfie
With increasing pressures on girls as young as 13 to look their best online, Dove decided to renew its fight against unrealistic beauty standards with a modern sequel to their 2006 campaign, ‘Evolution’.
The ‘reverse selfie’ campaign video features a 13-year-old girl who drastically edited a picture of herself before posting it online.
The film plays backwards, starting with the posted selfie, then reversing the various tweaks and staging to finally reveal the young girl behind the picture. It reveals the shocking reality behind many young women’s selfies on social media, and the harmful effects of heavily edited social media posts.
Accompanying the film is a set of photographic posters. Each split in half, they depict natural faces of girls against heavily edited versions, in order to emphasise the impact of retouching apps.
The posters include powerful statements such as “instant face apps, lasting damage” and “face editing removes blemishes, freckles and confidence”.
Leveraging its power and influence, Dove is using this campaign to continue their fight for real beauty standards, aiming to drive a conversation and start a movement to change selfie culture.
According to Juliana Paracencio, Global Creative Director at Ogilvy UK, the campaign is targeting parents, with the hope that they will download Dove’s social media kit and have #TheSelfieTalk with their children.
Naked ambition in reaching the audience
The campaign is predominantly delivered on TV and social media. It has a high presence on Instagram, possibly due to the platform’s focus on the sharing of photos. The social media posts often repurpose the campaign’s video and images into shorter snippets for the posts. Dove also posted some simple graphics with statistics which might shock viewers. In post descriptions, they elaborate on the issue and invite you to participate in their campaign and use their resources.
The campaign uses the hashtags #TheSelfieTalk, relating to their call to action, and #NoDigitalDistortion, which hopes to champion natural beauty over unrealistic beauty standards online. With the latter, they are encouraging social media users to pledge to post unedited photos of themselves in support of the cause.
Many #DovePartners, including influencers and celebrities, took part in the campaign. Namely, Lizzo posted an unedited naked photo of herself, which became one of the singer’s more popular posts on Instagram, gaining nearly 2.5 million likes.
What was the impact of the Dove Reverse Selfie campaign?
The campaign has received good press coverage, both within the marketing industry and more widely in newspapers such as The Mirror. The press coverage was affirmative, highlighting the significance and positive impact of the campaign.
Moreover, the campaign was mentioned less directly as an example of a successful campaign in articles, such as “How to Cultivate Empathy in the Workplace” which features in Forbes.
It has also been popular on social media, with Dove’s campaign posts generally receiving more engagement than product-focused posts and the company’s other campaigns. The split face graphics and video snippets appeared the most popular, possibly due to their shock factor.
Moreover, Instagram has user-generated content under the two campaign hashtags, with over 1000 posts using the hashtag #NoDigitalDistortion. The content mostly focuses on natural selfies and comparisons of retouched and natural versions of users’ photos.
So, will you have #TheSelfieTalk?
Over the years, Dove has led a cultural conversation about the definition of beauty. It has become known for provocative advertising that combines social responsibility and brand marketing.
Dove ensures that their messaging is authentic. In this case, Dove did not use models, but instead cast girls that first-handedly experienced the issue that the campaign illustrates. Moreover, the photos were retouched with the same apps that girls have access to, further highlighting the retouching possibilities that are available at just the tap of a finger.
Through campaigns such as the ‘Reverse Selfie’, Dove continues to advocate for real beauty and shows that they are not operating on a solely capitalistic agenda. Given the success of these campaigns, it is likely that Dove will continue to drive their social marketing forward.
Has the ‘reverse selfie’ campaign encouraged you to have #TheSelfieTalk?
This piece was written by one of the students on our second Sookio Bootcamp, a week of remote work experience for 20 young marketers. Read the other pieces in the series about BBC Tokyo Olympics, Bodyform Womb Stories and Specsavers.