45% of girls drop out of sport due to low body confidence. Dove and Nike created the Body Confident Sport program to tackle the main reason they drop out at the root cause, to help girls stay in sport and feel good about themselves.

The brief was to announce the partnership of these two huge brands, before launching the initiative to as many parents as possible, and as many school sports coaches as we could. We were then tasked with rolling out the message at a more personal and empathetic level showing real girls with their own real body hang-ups.

To make parents and guardians aware of the program which was being delivered to girls through their school coaches.

We needed to be present in conversations about sport – revealing our unexpected statistic and showing the importance of keeping girls confident, wherever “girl parent” sport lovers,

Research commissioned by Dove found that when girls hit the age of 14, as many as 45% of them drop out of sport due to lack of body confidence.

The creative idea was to empower girls by providing everyone they encountered with one phrase they could keep at the forefront of their mind, almost as a mission statement. This came to life through the hashtag #KeepHerConfident. It reminded everyone to be hyper-aware of how they talk about their body around young girls in a sport setting, how they coach young girls, and how girls react to each other while doing sport.

#KeepHerConfident was central to the Dove & Nike partnership announcement, and accompanied every communication created for the campaign, from the launch film which aired at the Super Bowl, right through to the ecosystem of our targeted social campaign.

Adults 25-54 / Hispanic Adults 25-54 / Adults 25-54 with parenting affinity

Dove Masterbrand decided to widen their target audience beyond parents. Understanding that it isn’t only parents and guardians that play a part in a girl’s athletic experience, they also targeted both male & female sports coaches.

We used a multi-channel approach to strengthen brand power and drive saliency. The campaign launched at the Super Bowl, where we had a dedicated audience of sports fans and parents. Post-game strategy was essential to extend and reinforce the message immediately after - increasing both long term brand power, and short-term impact on the sales of key products. We also tapped into other sports related cultural moments, such as ‘March Madness’ in Q1 ’24 that were relevant to the target audience & message. Lastly, we identified areas where we could allow consumers to get involved, cultivating a two-way conversation with the brand.

To begin we created a 6” teaser asset to announce the Dove x Nike partnership, with the Body Confident Sport program then officially launched via an in person event at Nike headquarters in New York City, featuring sports star Venus Williams. From this event social content was created and shared to create a ground swell of support for the program. The ‘Hard Knocks’ film then followed launching at the most-watched Super Bowl ever with 123.7 million viewers. This was then supported by a multi-channel ecosystem of 15” and 6” assets which targeted our key audiences. Post-Super Bowl the conversation continued at key sporting moments such as March Madness with further 15” TV executions and 6” social assets across all the major social platforms. The #KeepHerConfident hashtag was used as the key call to action across all assets to encourage the campaign message to be spread far and wide organically.

Since launching the #KeepHerConfident campaign we’ve garnered an unprecedented 19.1 billion earn impressions via 2,481 pieces of coverage across 8 different engagement tactics. The campaign has secured over 229 broadcast segments, with a total positive sentiment of 98%. We have seen incredible interaction with the campaign through high-profile partners like Venus Williams and Kylie Kelce, with thousands of girls, parents and coaches praising the campaign and sharing our assets with their followers across social media. We also enjoyed shout outs from a host of sporting stars, as well as TV host Jimmy Fallon and Senator Raumesh Akbari. Furthermore, our activity was widely shared by parents and coaches many of who related personally to the struggles young girls are facing today. We outperformed the campaign’s impressions KPI’s target by 448%. And most importantly, we are on track to coach 1 million girls in 2024, which we should achieve annually going forward.