Dove is on mission to end race-based hair discrimination and enable women everywhere to embrace their natural beauty. Our brief: shine a light on this little-understood, rarely written about problem, and campaign for its long overdue end.

We won the Dove account after fielding a black pitch team. And they were unanimous in their antipathy to school photo day.

“I still feel the trauma.”

“I fucking hated it.”

“I just never went.”

Such an intense visceral reaction warranted further exploration. So we commissioned a really chunky piece of research to get under the skin of the subject. The results were astonishing. 84% of Black and mixed-race women with afro or textured hair felt the need to alter their authentic or natural hairstyle for school with 28% of black women in the UK actually skipping their school photo due to race-based hair discrimination.

The idea was created by a PR agency.

We located and recruited a cohort of black women that had experienced race-based hair discrimination in their school days. Working with the exceptionally talented black film director Ron Timehin, we shot a moving film in which eight affected women, share their stories about the long-lasting hold this untold form of racism has had on their lives.

The film sees the women have their school pictures retaken, this time wearing their hair as they have chosen, expressing beauty on their terms and showing up as their most authentic selves. The film captures the raw and emotional moment as each woman sees their new school picture for the first time, reclaiming the confidence they didn’t have at school.

The raw emotion of the story in the film was the hook through which we were able to attract the attention of a global media audience.

Our proprietary research found the insight 84% of Black and mixed-race women with afro or textured hair felt the need to alter their authentic or natural hairstyle for school with almost a third (30%) going out of their way to change it specifically for school picture day so they could fit in with the rest of their class. Over half (51%) agreed they felt worried about how to style their hair for the day. And the killer: 28% skipped school picture day altogether due to anxiousness around race-based hair discrimination. This became our key message.

We packaged up this research along with our film and sold it in to a global media audience, with a particular focus on UK news media and female lifestyle media.

Over the course of a three week media sell in we delivered an immense reach of 3.3 billion.

As well as selling in to traditional media we also outreached to black influencers across the UK (unpaid) and secured hundreds of social posts sharing and expressing support for the campaign.

We landed over hundreds of pieces of coverage, in the UK and internationally - including coverage in every single national newspaper. Unsurprising the sentiment was entirely positive with every hit including our key messages around race-based hair discrimination.

But who cares about coverage when you can claim actual change?!

Our research and film were directly cited by UK government ministers as contributing to the issuing of new rules for schools in the UK in 2022, delivered via the Equalities and Human Rights Commission and endorsed by the All Party Parliamentary Group for Race Equality In Education. It states that “pupils should not be stopped from wearing their hair in natural afro styles at school” and that “any existing uniform and appearance policies that ban certain hairstyles, without the possibility for exceptions to be made on racial grounds, are unlawful.”