In a US market saturated with female empowerment messages, we knew that talk is cheap. To break through the noise with distracted audiences and create change in entrenched media interests, we’d have to do more than just speak up.

So we decided to do something far more challenging and far more important – confront media sexism head on with direct, powerful action. We gave everyone the power to use their social feeds to call out media outlets whenever they made distracting, destructive and disgusting comments about female athletes. We did it when the whole world was watching, 24/7 in real-time.

And we did it using the most damning content of all – the media’s own words.

“Dear Media, when you only see a female athlete’s looks, you don’t see her at all.”

In summer 2016, Dove placed this headline alongside real-time, uncensored media quotes about female athletes on digital billboards in New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto.

Every quote gathered by our AI was also posted to a Dove.com content hub. With a click, each quote could be turned into a unique animated GIF and posted directly to the social channels of the media outlet that said it, sending a message that couldn’t easily be ignored. The site also shared data about the aspects of athletes’ appearance currently being scrutinized, including hair, clothing, age, body, and sex appeal.

On social, we posted the most outrageous quotes and data in real-time and partnered with champion gymnast Shawn Johnson to start a conversation about what’s at stake for young athletes struggling with media scrutiny of their appearance.

“Dear Media” not only anticipated the heated conversation about sexist coverage that summer but led the charge against it. Users shared 97% percent of the quotes we discovered, generating more than 40,000 Tweets and turning #MyBeautyMySay into a globally trending movement that reached an organic audience of 99.8 million, surpassing our engagement benchmark by more than 230%. The campaign also gathered 1.87 billion earned media impressions. Even global influencer and feminist icon Emma Watson tweeted her love of the campaign.

By turning the cozy relationship between advertisers and the media on its head, Dove and “Dear Media” set a new standard for how we talk about female athletes and showed the world that brands can create real change when they stop playing by the rules.