Dove & Twitter's 'Speak Beautiful' Oscars Social Change Campaign

Dove teamed up with Twitter on Oscar night to address bullying beauty and spiteful style tweets with a campaign called #SpeakBeautiful – a self-styled ‘partnership for social change’.

Frequent and often anonymous criticism (and sometimes hatred) is one of the less desirable hallmarks of social media and this joint Dove/Twitter initiative aimed to address and challenge this habit.

Dove’s idea is that it ‘only takes one positive tweet to start a trend’ and the spearhead spot supported by other campaign strands aimed to generate a tidal wave of Oscar-related positivity.

The campaign launched with a video that was posted on-line before the Oscars and also aired on ABC during the awards show telecast.

The TV commercial’s red carpet air time aimed to engage when tweets on the microblogging site are at their cattiest as stars parade their outfits and looks.

The spot itself is based on one very disturbing statistic: that in 2014 women posted more than five million negative tweets about beauty and body image (either their own or someone else’s).

Whenever a negative tweet was posted, the campaign’s technology led to non-automated Dove responses to real women that included constructive and accessible advice to encourage more positive online language and habits.

‘Advice will come directly from social media and self-esteem experts who collaborate with Dove and Twitter to empower women to speak with more confidence, optimism and kindness about beauty online,’ explained a Dove campaign statement.

In addition to advice, the campaign’s Twitter feed also highlighted the real-time Oscar-related spite statistics.

Tonight, we change this. Join Dove and @Twitter in a partnership to #SpeakBeautiful 7/8 pic.twitter.com/Og8ExTIEUh

— Dove (@Dove) February 22, 2015

Why it’s important to #SpeakBeautiful: Through 10pm – 1,378 Tweets used “hideous” which is LESS than these terms: https://t.co/ONPvLafWmP

— Dove (@Dove) February 23, 2015

“Ugly.” “Hideous.” “Gross.” We need to set a new bar. We & @Twitter need one more partner: YOU! #SpeakBeautiful pic.twitter.com/rENJFZxC06

— Dove (@Dove) February 23, 2015

‘Ideas and opinions about body image are now fluidly shared every second through social feeds, and sometimes we do not fully realize the resounding impact of the words in even one post,’ added Dove marketing director Jennifer Bremner.

‘The power to #SpeakBeautiful is in the hands of us all—we can positively change the way future generations express themselves online.’

The project emanates from fresh Dove self-esteem and social media research.

Among they key findings from the research are:

80% of women encounter negative comments on social media that critique women’s looks
Women are 50% more likely to say something negative about themselves than positive on social media
Only 9% of women actually admit to posting any negative comments on Twitter
82% of women surveyed feel the beauty standards set by social media are unrealistic
80% of negative tweets Twitter identified about beauty and body image are women talking about themselves

Comment

The sentiment and objective behind this campaign is not dissimilar from Coca-Cola’s aborted ‘make It Happy’ Super Bowl initiative.

But could Dove succeed where Coke couldn’t?

Certainly the initial results of Dove’s Oscars initiative are positive.

In fact, Dove was one of the big social media winners of the Oscars telecast with its #SpeakBeautiful TV spot< generated 29,250 mentions – an impressive 91% of which were positive.

Perhaps its signs of success are because Dove’s approach, unlike Coca-Colas, wasn’t automated.

Links

Dove USA YouTube

https://www.youtube.com/user/doveunitedstates

Dove Website

http://www.dove.co.uk/en/

Dove Facebook

https://www.facebook.com/DoveUKI?brand_redir=1

Dove Twitter

https://twitter.com/Dove

The Oscars Website:

http://oscar.go.com/