Dove - Turn Your Back (case study)

Dove is encouraging people to 'turn their back' on the new Bold Glamour filter as part of its mission to create a #NoDigitalDistortion movement. The influencer-led campaign, developed by Ogilvy and DAVID, is kicking off with content creators sharing how they personally feel about the Bold Glamour filter and the damage it can do (and is doing) to social users. The Bold Glamour filter presents a concerning ideal of ‘beauty’ – one that looks real, too real. In the seven days since it launched, the hashtag has been viewed more than 365M times (probably more by now).

The campaign is galvanising people to stand together and physically turn their backs on this harmful form of digital distortion. Through research done by the Dove Self-Esteem Project 38% of girls in the US say they can’t live up to the beauty standards that influencers project on social media, and 80% say they have already applied a filter or used a retouching app to change the way they look in their photos by age 13. As a result, 48% of girls who distort their photos regularly have lower body esteem compared to 28% of girls who don’t. More detail in the attached release.

The filter launched while Ogilvy was hosting a global creative meeting with members of its creative community from around the world. The brief was put out as a Borderless Brief to the creative community and in less than 24 hours they agency had over 250 slides worth of ideas. The end result is a product of the borderless creativity that drives Ogilvy’s global creative network. In the end, the team rallied around the idea for #TurnYourBack, which was created by DAVID Madrid and Ogilvy UK with production assistance from DAVID São Paulo.