This post is part of a blog series focusing on successful health marketing campaigns using multiple communications disciplines and media channels.  If you have a campaign we should highlight, let us know.

Unilever embraced the power of the “groundswell” with the Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty.

Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research and Charlene Li (now of the Altimeter Group) highlighted Unilever’s Dove campaign in their bestselling non-fiction book, Groundswell. This book focused on how businesses are using social technologies.

The campaign’s mission is to “make more women feel beautiful everyday by widening stereotypical views of beauty.” To accomplish this, the campaign deviated from the typical trend of highlighting “beautiful” skinny models. Instead, Unilever featured “real” and average women. They used a mix of print, TV and billboard ads, along with many social and new media strategies. For example, Dove helped to further the use of video sharing Websites by introducing its “Evolution” video on YouTube in 2006.

During the first two years of the campaign, the “Evolution” video had over 5 million hits on YouTube. As a result, Dove won the top award for advertising at Cannes.

With young women at highest risk for body dysmorphia and a variety of eating disorders, it is refreshing to see a beauty product campaign with this tone. As a member of the target audience at the time, I remember friends forwarding the YouTube video to me. At my undergraduate institution, the campaign inspired a student organization to hold a drive where women donated their “skinny jeans” and embraced their bodies.  If the campaign had this impact on me, I’m sure it positively influenced many others.

Read More from Walking the Path:

1. My Pink Water Bottle – Cause Marketing Criticized
2. The Own Your C Anti-Smoking Campaign
3. Love Life and Live Up – HIV Campaigns Around the World