Machado, who was global brand development VP on Dove from 2010 to 2014, saw that firsthand when traveling. When he would tell border control officers at JFK what he did, “the conversation completely changed,” he said. “It would be like, ‘Oh, such a great brand, real women, real beauty.’”
Machado, who worked on Dove across many CRB efforts, including “Real Beauty Sketches,” said what he learned in working on the campaign influenced how he thought about marketing at his subsequent stops as a marketer.
“It was an amazing four years in my career and my life,” Machado said. Among other things, he said it taught him about “the strength of a powerful insight that’s a real human truth. I’m always searching for that.”
Disruption beyond Dove
For Jim Stengel, who has focused on purpose marketing since his days at P&G and during his nearly 16 subsequent years as a consultant, Campaign for Real Beauty ranks “at least among the top five” of purpose-driven campaigns. “I don’t know what would rank above it right now,” he said.
“They never got tired of it,” Stengel said. “They’re still innovating through their purpose. They’re serious. They’re meaningful. They link it to their business. And they do it in a way that’s very natural.”
This may not always have been the easiest thing for Stengel to say, since he was rival P&G’s chief marketer in 2004 when Unilever launched the campaign. But he admired it from afar, even if not everyone at P&G did.
“It was the reaction that any disruption brings,” Stengel said of how P&G viewed Dove’s campaign. “There were people who dismissed it, because it seemed so far afield that it wasn’t going to be relatable or sustainable. It broke so many of the norms. But some felt they were owning a space that’s maybe the biggest space in the category, and that is very threatening to several of P&G’s businesses, especially Olay. So I think it had a reaction of surprise, some rejection and eventually lots of admiration.”
Campaign for Real Beauty also inspired purpose work at P&G, such as the Always “Like a Girl” campaign. Marc Pritchard, chief brand officer at P&G, has said the process that led to “Like a Girl” began at the Cannes Lions festival in 2013, when P&G execs watched—with a certain level of envy—as “Sketches” won 19 Lions, including the coveted Titanium Grand Prix.
Campaign as a talent magnet
Daniel Fisher was working for Leo Burnett in 2006 when he saw “Evolution” for the first time. “It was startling the way it makes you feel that truth,” Fisher said. “I remember walking out of my office at Leo Burnett and thinking I need to up my game.’”
By 2019, he was working for Ogilvy on Unilever, currently as global executive creative director. And he said Dove and the Campaign for Real Beauty help attract talent to the agency to this day. He recently spoke to a new hire who mentioned “one of the reasons they joined is because they have a teenage daughter and they love all the work that we’ve been doing,” Fisher said. “It’s impossible to have a daughter age 16 and not empathize with the stories we’ve been telling in the last four or five years. Absolutely, people are drawn to that.”
Among recent CRB work from Ogilvy is the 2024 Super Bowl spot, a “Cost of Beauty” ad calling for a bill to help prevent harm to girls from toxic social media posts, and a salute to health care workers in the early days of the pandemic.
Fisher also worked on the recently launched “10 vs. 10” campaign in the U.K. drawing attention to the steep increase in 10-year-old girls using anti-aging products by showing carefree girls alongside others using anti-aging serums and eye masks, asking “Why did 10 stop looking like this?”
The pandemic salute to health care workers, one of the more memorable in a flood of brand ads in the early pandemic days four years ago, was one of the first Dove projects Fisher was involved with. And it was an example, he said, of a place where the brand earned a right to speak largely because of its Real Beauty legacy.
Ogilvy has done most, but not all, of the ad campaign creative, with exceptions that include work by Interpublic’s Lola in 2021 and more recently by Soko, Sao Paulo, which handled “The Code.”
Edelman’s role
Often overlooked is that, from its beginning, Campaign for Real Beauty also was a PR effort, originally linked to the Dove Fund for Self-Esteem and a “Uniquely Me!” self-esteem campaign for U.S. Girl Scout Troops.
Underpinning that was a global survey conducted by Edelman, about women and beauty, which had a bigger impact once the findings were “flipped on their head” to point out that only 2% of women said they felt beautiful, Bright said.
Lisa Sepulveda, who worked on the campaign from the start and is now global chief client officer of Edelman, had two daughters ages 7 and 8 at the time.
“I knew right away how important the impact of this would be,” Sepulveda said, “not just for my daughters … but for women all over the world who did not see themselves as beautiful. Most women’s self-esteem had been challenged by the images the beauty industry had promoted for their entire lives.”
The Dove Self-Esteem project has since reached more than 100 million girls globally, Sepulveda said. Another outgrowth of the campaign has been Dove’s support of the Crown Act against race-based hair discrimination, which since has been enacted in 24 states.
And, she said, the effort has had a positive impact on agencies, beyond changing the narrative about beauty.
“All of the agency partners working with the Dove brand,” Sepulveda said, “were asked by our clients to work together to get to the idea that would ultimately become a campaign that drives real impact and create an authentic movement with staying power.”
The campaign has also drawn criticism over the years.
Below, a look at some of the high and low Real Beauty moments.