Only 4% of women believe they’re beautiful. How could we prove to the other 96% that they are more beautiful than they think?

Our idea was to conduct a social experiment: We invited an FBI-trained sketch artist to draw a woman’s portrait first according to her own self-description, then according to a strangers’ description of her. Throughout, the artist never laid eyes on the women themselves. To close, we held an exhibition comparing the sketches. Women admitted that portraits based on the strangers’ description were more beautiful, happier and even more accurate than the portraits based on their own description.

. The film provided striking proof that women are more beautiful than they think.

Ten days in, the conversation exploded in mainstream media:

- 3 billion media impressions (all original stories)

- Segments on The Today show, Good Morning America, NBC news

- Articles in the New York Times,The Guardian, Forbes.com, The Telegraph, Huffington Post

- 118.409 mentions across 6519 sites with a combined readership of 1.6 billion

• 46.4 million youtube views

• The most shared article in the history of mashable.com

• 1.9 million aggregate shares on Facebook

• 208 million Twitter impressions

• 19,153 uses of the hashtag #wearebeautiful

All of which is taking the brand’s relationship with people to new heights:

- 14,368% increase in daily rate of tweets about the brand

- 337,000 new fans recruited on Facebook, taking the total to 14 million

- 4.3 million clicks through to the Dove site

- Brand search volumes online increased up to 5 times across markets.

With minimal paid media support, we positioned the film as a social experiment and igniteed a conversation around women’s self-perception.

To spread the campaign we used the most talkative, contagious, sharable, viral medium out there: women themselves. Combined with viral videos, a mass PR campaign and the wildfire of social media.

The campaign was launched for Dove’s 14 million Facebook fans. Then, we launched a mass PR campaign, with our FBI-trained sketch artist and the women in the experiment appearing on major U.S. and Australia TV programmes.

For reach, a global partnership with YouTube’s TrueView platform was optimized across 20 key regions, ensuring views across countries, maximized on efficiency and consumer engagement.

To ignite conversation, we shared it with Dove’s 14 million Facebook fans. Promoted tweets and trends on Twitter and paid and owns posts on Facebook, reinforced with highly targeted search.