Dove

In 2004, Dove ran a global piece of research and discovered that only 2% of women were comfortable defining themselves as beautiful. This triggered a shift within the brand. It went in search of a higher purpose, driven by its commitment to inspire customers and change consumer perceptions of what “beauty” means.

This led to Dove launching its campaign for Real Beauty and the Dove Self-Esteem Project. It has been committed to changing beauty into a positive experience for every woman and the next generation ever since.

Turning promise into value

Alessandro Manfredi, CMO of Dove, knew such a transformation would be predicated on a singular belief in this purpose, but also that when there is such alignment, creativity can come more naturally. Manfredi built his team around the concept of shaping these ideas with an intentional balance between imagination and crafting.

With this balance in place, Manfredi describes how making Dove’s new purpose personal and emotional to senior leaders resulted in complete organisational buy-in and alignment: 

“We created a video with the daughters of very senior people, and we asked the kids ‘What do you like about your body? What don’t you like?’ And the answers were shocking. We then created a video with those answers and that really made our leaders understand there is a big human truth out there, and that gave us a bit of a license to try.”

Harnessing exponential growth