For over 15 years, Dove has championed Real Beauty, aiming to provide a positive beauty experience accessible to every woman. The company achieves this goal by providing girls with self-esteem education and working to eliminate unrealistic beauty ideals in industries like media and gaming.

The creative idea behind Dove's gaming campaign was to promote inclusivity and authenticity in the gaming world by challenging narrow beauty standards and sexualization of female characters. Dove worked with Real Beauty models to create 3D video game characters that were made available for free download on their website. The campaign also included the development of Real Beauty training modules for game developers to improve in-game representation of beauty. The campaign was launched with PR outreach in the UK, Canada, and the US, and was supported by influencers and a paid advertising campaign. The campaign's centerpiece was a short film that depicted the story of Cinthia, a sexualized gaming character who decides to reveal her true, authentic self. The film highlights the issue of underrepresentation of women in the gaming industry, and Dove's partnership with Unreal Engine and Women in Gaming to address this issue.

The Real Virtual Beauty campaign was activated in two parts, with two distinct audiences. The first part focused on educating game developers and the female gaming community about the importance of inclusivity in gaming. This education program was designed to reach "insiders" and promote awareness about the benefits of inclusive gaming characters.

The second part of the campaign targeted a broader audience through consumer media. By raising awareness among the general public, Dove hoped to highlight the issue of beauty standards in gaming and promote inclusivity in the industry. The two-pronged approach aimed to create a lasting impact on the industry and change perceptions around beauty standards in gaming. The campaign's ultimate goal was to make gaming a more positive experience for all players by providing representation and inclusivity in gaming characters.

To champion inclusivity in the gaming world, we selected a group of Real Beauty models and turned them into video game characters.The 3D models were available to download for free on Dove’s website.

Dove also developed real beauty training modules for developers all over the world to access to enable better in-game representation of beauty in the future. All this work has been done with the Dove-funded team of self-esteem and body confidence scientists at the Centre for Appearance Research.

We launched the campaign with PR outreach in the UK, CA, and the US. Through our presence at SXSW and EGX, the biggest UK gaming Festival, we engaged the 75,000 gaming fans in attendance by hosting a panel with some of our partners and influencers as well as creating a Real Virtual Beauty booth about the lack of representation in gaming and the actions we were taking to change that.

The Real Virtual Beauty campaign was a huge success, with over 46 media outlets covering the story and reaching over 300 million impressions. The campaign's reach exceeded its initial goal by doubling the targeted 250 million impressions. The initiative was received positively, with 100% positive sentiment towards the campaign. Additionally, 85% of women surveyed expressed their preference for video games with more diverse representation.

This initiative led to a partnership with Epic Games’ Unreal Engine and Women in Games, kicking off the Real Beauty in Games Training, a course developed in partnership with Centre for Appearance Research and to help creators to reflect the diversity and avoid contributing to bias and stereotypes in design, equipping the next generation of players and creators with the tools they need to build self-esteem and body confidence.