Beautifully Real Moms
By Ogilvy, Toronto, Canada
For Unilever Brand Baby Dove
Winner in category Advertising
In subcategory Outdoor
Project Description
For 60 years, Dove has been celebrating real women through the campaign for “Real Beauty”. This year, we extended our efforts into the most wonderful, yet anxious time in a woman’s life: motherhood.
Dove has dabbled in the baby category in Canada for the past 10 years with little growth. With the current Baby Care market worth $55 million and projected to grow by +2%, Dove saw this as an opportunity to launch a new line of Premium Baby Care Products: Baby Dove.
Entering the market wouldn’t be easy. We had to compete against juggernaut Johnson & Johnson, who already owned 63.7% of the market with their J&J Baby and Aveeno Baby brands.
And while motherhood should be a joyful time, all too often it is filled with insecurity and an unhealthy obsession with portraying an image of the perfect Mom. Maddeningly unattainable photos of picture-perfect Moms and their picture-perfect babies are no longer reserved for Hollywood celebrities. They are everywhere: in ads, on TV, on Facebook and Instagram. These images are making new Moms feel overwhelmed, insecure, and even incompetent. In some cases, they are even contributing to a rise in post-partum depression.
To confirm whether there was any merit in these observations, we commissioned a study to better understand Millennial Moms and the pressures of motherhood. It determined that these pressures are very real. And very alarming:
•99% of Moms feel pressure to be perfect.
•81% question if what they’re doing is good enough.
•75% feel unable to cope at times
Given our heritage in Real Beauty, it only made sense to put a real lens on motherhood amongst our increasingly insecure target, Millennial Moms. If we could give her confidence in her role as mother, we could start to wrestle away some of the authority and trust that J&J Baby had which would ultimately cause her to choose us over the market leader.
Dove has dabbled in the baby category in Canada for the past 10 years with little growth. With the current Baby Care market worth $55 million and projected to grow by +2%, Dove saw this as an opportunity to launch a new line of Premium Baby Care Products: Baby Dove.
Entering the market wouldn’t be easy. We had to compete against juggernaut Johnson & Johnson, who already owned 63.7% of the market with their J&J Baby and Aveeno Baby brands.
And while motherhood should be a joyful time, all too often it is filled with insecurity and an unhealthy obsession with portraying an image of the perfect Mom. Maddeningly unattainable photos of picture-perfect Moms and their picture-perfect babies are no longer reserved for Hollywood celebrities. They are everywhere: in ads, on TV, on Facebook and Instagram. These images are making new Moms feel overwhelmed, insecure, and even incompetent. In some cases, they are even contributing to a rise in post-partum depression.
To confirm whether there was any merit in these observations, we commissioned a study to better understand Millennial Moms and the pressures of motherhood. It determined that these pressures are very real. And very alarming:
•99% of Moms feel pressure to be perfect.
•81% question if what they’re doing is good enough.
•75% feel unable to cope at times
Given our heritage in Real Beauty, it only made sense to put a real lens on motherhood amongst our increasingly insecure target, Millennial Moms. If we could give her confidence in her role as mother, we could start to wrestle away some of the authority and trust that J&J Baby had which would ultimately cause her to choose us over the market leader.
Agency Solution
Using our insights into millennial moms, along with Dove’s deep understanding of real women, we developed Baby Dove’s point of view: There are no perfect moms, only real ones.
To help alleviate the pressure on mom and raise confidence in her new anxiety-charged role, we commissioned several world-renowned female photojournalists, including Pulitzer prize-winning Lynsey Addario and Ami Vitale.
Lynsey Addario has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her work on conflicts and human rights issues. Her images have been featured in Time Magazine, the New York Times.
Ami Vitale photographs routinely grace the pages of National Geographic and she has won the World Press Photo Contest 4 times.
Over three days and nights, our photojournalists immersed themselves in 6 moms’ lives, capturing the beautifully imperfect side of motherhood like never before. From over 10,000 photos, we curated 120 to be displayed in our online Gallery of Real Moms, which provocatively depicted the good, the bad and the messy sides of being a real mom.
Our target was millennial moms with babies aged 0-2 years. So we decided to speak to her where she is most – online. We included high reaching tactics during mom’s new prime time, when she was up at night feeding, scrolling through her social feeds and looking for entertainment.
Our social campaign consisted of:
• A 360º Photo Gallery sampling that seeded the issue, “Are perfect photos putting too much pressure on mom?”
• A :10 sec video asking moms to pause and appreciate the beauty of being a real mom.
• A carousel unit inviting moms to “Help us reduce the pressure 99% of moms feel to be perfect.”
• A Mother’s Day carousel, inviting moms to share their own #BeautifullyRealMoms photos.
We also gave moms a way to become a part of the solution by:
1. Inviting her to visit our photo gallery and be inspired by the beautiful realness of other moms
2. Posting her own #BeautifullyRealMoms photo in support of real moms everywhere
In out of home digital boards and newspaper, we ignited conversation by showcasing some of our most powerful photos along with #BeautifullyRealMoms.
To help alleviate the pressure on mom and raise confidence in her new anxiety-charged role, we commissioned several world-renowned female photojournalists, including Pulitzer prize-winning Lynsey Addario and Ami Vitale.
Lynsey Addario has been awarded the Pulitzer Prize for her work on conflicts and human rights issues. Her images have been featured in Time Magazine, the New York Times.
Ami Vitale photographs routinely grace the pages of National Geographic and she has won the World Press Photo Contest 4 times.
Over three days and nights, our photojournalists immersed themselves in 6 moms’ lives, capturing the beautifully imperfect side of motherhood like never before. From over 10,000 photos, we curated 120 to be displayed in our online Gallery of Real Moms, which provocatively depicted the good, the bad and the messy sides of being a real mom.
Our target was millennial moms with babies aged 0-2 years. So we decided to speak to her where she is most – online. We included high reaching tactics during mom’s new prime time, when she was up at night feeding, scrolling through her social feeds and looking for entertainment.
Our social campaign consisted of:
• A 360º Photo Gallery sampling that seeded the issue, “Are perfect photos putting too much pressure on mom?”
• A :10 sec video asking moms to pause and appreciate the beauty of being a real mom.
• A carousel unit inviting moms to “Help us reduce the pressure 99% of moms feel to be perfect.”
• A Mother’s Day carousel, inviting moms to share their own #BeautifullyRealMoms photos.
We also gave moms a way to become a part of the solution by:
1. Inviting her to visit our photo gallery and be inspired by the beautiful realness of other moms
2. Posting her own #BeautifullyRealMoms photo in support of real moms everywhere
In out of home digital boards and newspaper, we ignited conversation by showcasing some of our most powerful photos along with #BeautifullyRealMoms.