Dove

There were two objectives behind Ogilvy’s 2006 work on its Dove account: make the Dove

Self-Esteem Fund highly visible, and invite women and their daughters to the workshops taking place across the country over the fall.

To do it, the agency decided to create a series of short online films to expose the negative impact of the beauty culture. Another facet of the execution: use the Internet exclusively. That meant no fixed lengths of 30 or 60 seconds, no expectation of seeing a product and no requirement for the brand name to appear within the first few seconds.

The first film was “Daughters,” which featured young girls and women from Toronto and Halifax speaking frankly about the effect of unrealistic beauty standards in their lives. Next was “Evolution,” a demonstration of the simple truth that models only look like models after hairstylists, make-up artists, lighting guys and retouchers have created the illusion of beauty.

The results are now the stuff of ad history. The workshops sold out. Within two weeks, over two million people had seen the films on the web. “Evolution” appeared globally on talk shows and news programs, including BBC Breakfast, Good Morning America, Today and Ellen. It made the front page of the Toronto Star. Ad Age wrote that the YouTube posting generated three times more responses than the previous year’s Super Bowl commercial.

Today, 10 months later, Dove sales are up and spend is down in Canada. The viral is considered the most successful in history, seen by over 300 million people around the world and with an estimated media value of over $150 million. And the work has also rewritten ad award history: the Cannes ad festival awarded “Evolution” the first-ever double Grand Prix.