Dove Self Esteem Fund

The idea

Here’s a complement and contrast to the Girl video. Dove continue to run their Self-Esteem Fund as part of their Campaign for Real Beauty, “an agent of change to inspire and educate girls and young women about a wider definition of beauty.” Moving beyond just talking about it in their marketing, they provide action, running workshops with local organisations, such as Me! in the US and Body Talk in the UK. They’ve run around 2,700 workshops, with 2 million girls reached, in the last 2 years looking raising self-confidence and self-esteen, with a target of reaching 5 million girls by 2010. They’re planning on releasing a report about National Self-esteem later in the year.

The latest instalment in the campaign, Under Pressure, takes a starting point of Onslaught and then looks at the workshops and the impact of them. It looks directly at the action the brand is taking over and above the product.

Under Pressure

Onslaught

What I think

Overall, I love the Self-Esteem Fund; they are doing a great job in getting a real message out there,, in making a change. Not too fond of the latest video though, being a little too cutesey for my personal taste; I’m guessing it’s a US cut and one targeted at a UK market would have a slightly more gritty take. A longer video gives a better insight into what the workshops do.

The Pitch

Great pitch, thanking me for my previous contributions and then massaging my ego a little:

As a key partner in our efforts to widen society’s stereotypical view of beauty, we wanted you to be the first to learn of the new self-esteem building programming we plan to roll out later this year.

It’s still a form letter, but one that’s well written, doesn’t patronise and offers me lots of stuff with a link to a page full of assets, pictures, videos and logos. Dove and their agency (in this case Rocket XL) have really worked at doing this right, giving all the stuff you need to write a post. They treat bloggers as professionals, an attitude that can be lacking on some PR agencies.

All logos and videos by permission Dove/RocketXL