Our Social Mission
Dove's mission is to help this generation of young women develop a positive relationship with the way they look - helping them raise their self-esteem and realize their full potential.
Since 2004, the Dove Self-Esteem Project has delivered self-esteem education to young people through lessons in schools, workshops for youth groups, and online resources for parents.
Evolving for 2014
In 2014, Dove took that mission to Snapchat. Public self-esteem conversations can be intimidating, and Snapchat's more private settings allowed Dove to create a safe, engaging space for women and girls to shed insecurities, acquire tools to build self-esteem, and provide real-time access to Dove self-esteem educators.
Women and girls shared their insecurities via snaps - a new way to voice concerns and allow them to literally disappear. This reinforced the campaign, underscoring how vocalizing insecurities in life eases our ability to confront them.
Every day of the week-long program, Dove shared interactive self-esteem exercises in a Snapchat Story. Beyond this one-to-many approach, Dove made self-esteem one-to-one sessions available. Women and girls were given the opportunity to Snap their personal questions to Dove's self-esteem ambassadors.
Snapping Up Self-Esteem
The response was overwhelming. Dove ambassadors addressed personal self-esteem issues: questions not being asked or answered on other social networks. Self-esteem content received over 340,000 views and 1,500 screenshots from Snapchat Stories. This launch also opened a door on a platform where young women increasingly spend their time and need the self-esteem boost Dove is there to provide.
While many brands jump at the opportunity to launch on up and coming platforms, Dove's approach on Snapchat deeply reflected both its own brand mission and the needs of Snapchat users. Dove founded its Self-Esteem Project in 2004, delivering self-esteem education through lessons in schools, workshops for youth groups, and online resources for parents. As modes of communication have evolved, so has the program, and in 2014, Dove launched its presence on Snapchat focusing solely on self-esteem education.
The public nature of most social media platforms makes them difficult places to conduct honest dialogue about insecurities, but Snapchat's private and ephemeral nature allowed Dove to create a safe space within social media.
In coordination with the launch of "Self-Esteem Weekend" at the United Nations, Dove laid out a program of exercises to participate in and tools to learn to help build self-esteem. Women and girls sent their insecurities and worries along with the positive feelings that made them feel beautiful to Dove on Snapchat. With Dove's encouragement, they also posted those positive feeling to more public platforms, like Twitter and Instagram. Most crucially for a sensitive area like self-esteem, Dove employed self-esteem ambassadors and bloggers like Gaby Fresh and Ruby Karp to speak with women and girls one-to-one to answer questions, deliver pep talks, and share their own experiences.
This was a true activation of an emerging platform - crafted specifically and solely for this platform and this brand. Dove was able to match the private and ephemeral nature only Snapchat provides to deliver the self-esteem messaging that the demographic overly represented in its user base needs.
Reaction from women and girls was overwhelming, and self-esteem content received 340,000 views and 1,500 screenshots from Dove Snapchat Stories.
