Social Media Analysis of Dove’s Project #ShowUs Campaign
Dove is a personal care brand founded in 1957 in the United States. Their products range from soap bars, liquid body wash, deodorant, and much more for men, women, and babies. The brand is known for being the #1 dermatologist recommended brand in the United States, Canada, and France (Dove, n.d.). Dove’s mission statement is at the core in everything that the brand does, their mission statement reads, “Our mission is to make a positive experience of beauty accessible to all women” (Dove, n.d.). For years, Dove has been trying to redefine the meaning of beauty, challenge beauty standards, and helping their customers build their self-esteem and confidence. The brand has launched several campaigns throughout the years to help raise women and young girl’s self-esteem with campaigns such as the Real Beauty Campaign and the No Digital Distortion. In 2019, Dove launched their newest campaign called, Project #ShowUs in partnership with Getty Images, the world’s largest distributor of photos and Girlgaze, a diverse media agency.
A collection of over 5,000 photographs of 179 women from 39 countries across the globe were taken which featured women of all shapes, sizes, ethnicities, backgrounds, and abilities. The purpose of Project #ShowUs is to encourage advertisers and media owners to look at these photographs of these women and encourage them to use and license these photographs in campaigns (I/O, 2021). The idea for #ShowUs originated from the fact that according to statistics 70% of women do not feel like they are being represented in commercials and advertisements (I/O, 2021). Furthermore, Dove also started this campaign idea when they looked at images in advertisements:
Images in ads and the media still impose unrealistic standards and limiting stereotypes which present a narrow view of who women are, what they should look like and what they can achieve. It affects their lives, health, relationships, and the opportunities they are given. We wanted to drive deep systemic change (Unilever PLC, 2022).
According to Dove’s own research, “If women don’t feel represented, it can hold them back from reaching their full potential. The effects are vast, negatively impacting health, career, and relationships” (2021). This project has allowed Dove to create a collection of stock images of real women and to share beauty inclusivity through these images. For decades, women have been subjected to unrealistic body standards and lack of diversity in the media and this campaign was pivotal in making a change in how women are represented in the media.
Campaign
The essence of the Project #ShowUs is to set a new standard for diverse representation of women (Unilever PLC, 2022). Dove led their customers to their website to take the Project #ShowUs pledge. Customers pledged not to digitally distort pictures of themselves on social media, be an active role model by utilizing body-positive language to build one’s self-esteem, and promised to support laws that promote beauty inclusivity for women and girls (Take the Project #ShowUs Pledge, n.d.) When Dove introduced the hashtag and campaign on Instagram this opened the conversation about the pressure that social media has on women and young girls’ self-esteem. Dove’s partners and influencers began posting photos of themselves using the hashtag ‘show us’ and encouraging their followers to take part in photographing themselves authentically and breaking beauty stereotypes and standards.
The social media channel that was primarily used was Instagram because it is a photo sharing app and photographs were being posted and shared, though Twitter was also used as well. On Instagram, Dove would post about Project #ShowUs using the same format when discussing the campaign or sharing photographs from this campaign. The post would include a photograph of a woman or non-binary individual and sometimes with a polaroid template and the hashtag show us and a condition or who that person is; whether it is an athlete, a mother, a scientist, or something unique about them that is stereotyped in the media. Dove uses their #ShowUs posts to celebrate National Women’s Day or Native American Heritage month or any other holidays celebrating people. In the caption of these posts, Dove would ask their followers to let them know in the comments who they would like to see be represented in the campaign, and it was a great way to hear from their audience and have them get involved.
Alongside photographs Dove shared on their Instagram page short form videos where real women share why they believe they should be represented in the media and how it feels to not be represented. For example, Dove interviewed Garbo Hearne, a gallery owner and Sophie Boursat, a contemporary artist who share their thoughts on the lack of inclusivity for mature women in the media. On Twitter, Dove has showcased Project #ShowUs by posting both videos and photographs. Not only was Dove using the hashtag to post photos on videos on Twitter, but they also used the hashtag to celebrate women and non-binary people’s successes.
For example, when NBC News made a post about Lilly Singh announcing that she is the first woman of color and bi-sexual woman host of a late-night talk show, Dove reposted it and responded by using the #ShowUs hashtag to celebrate Lily’s accomplishment. The #ShowUs hashtag is also used to celebrate holidays that celebrate people such as National Women’s Day just like on Instagram, this is done more on Twitter because the hashtags celebrating these holidays do tend to trend and are posted more on Twitter, which will allow users to see Dove’s posts and get introduced to their campaign and brand.
According to Omnicore Agency’s website, roughly 31.2% of Instagram users are between the ages of 25–34, 15.9% are between the ages of 35–44, and 7.9% are between the ages of 45–54 (Aslam, 2022). Based on these statistics, it is evident that most Generation Z and Millennials use Instagram more than those over the age of 45. The target audience on Instagram for Project #ShowUs are women and non-binary individuals between the ages of 20–40, given that these age ranges use Instagram the most. Though based on Dove’s campaign posts about mature women, they are still targeting the Baby Boomer age range by addressing the lack of representation mature women in the media.
However, they are primarily targeting Millennials, Generation X, and Generation Z on Instagram, because those are the generations that use Instagram the most and are likely to participate in the campaign and interact with their posts. According to Statista’s website, on Twitter users between the ages of 25–34 make up most of Twitter’s users with a percentage of 38.5%. 17.1% of Twitter users are 18–24, 20.7% are 25–49, and 17.1% are 50 years older and up (Statista, 2022). Based on the statistics, it is evident that older generations are mostly utilizing Twitter and that is who Dove is trying to target to get their campaign to reach older individuals who may not be on Instagram.
I would say that on Instagram Dove’s posts on the #ShowUs campaign are more successful than on Twitter, there is more engagement on Instagram than on Twitter. On Instagram, the likes range in the 1,500–5,000 and about less than 100 comments on the posts. On Twitter, the engagement is far less. There are about 2–6 comments, 10 or less retweets, and about 20 likes. As far as people using the hashtag show us, it seems that it is mostly used on Instagram than on Twitter, which makes sense seeing as Instagram is primarily utilized as a photo sharing app more than Twitter is. Table 1 depicts the engagement rate percentage of the same post on two different platforms. Although it is evident that the engagement percentages are low for both platforms, Instagram has a higher engagement percentage and better engagement than Twitter.
Another example to showcase that the campaign was far more successful on Instagram is by looking at the engagement of similar posts from both social media platforms. A post was made to celebrate International Women’s Day, on Instagram the post received 1,221 likes and 58 comments, on Twitter the post received 5 comments and 34 likes. Dove’s follower count on Instagram grew while on Twitter their follower count decreased, although the campaign began in 2019 the data shows the growth from 2020 to 2022 for both Instagram and Twitter. Table 2 shows Dove’s Instagram and Twitter following from October 2020 to October 2022.
The graph illustrates how Dove’s Instagram following went from 575,474 followers in October 2020 to 759,00 followers (Dove Instagram Followers Statistics / Analytics — SPEAKRJ Stats, 2020). On Twitter their following went from 189,836 followers in October of 2020 to 187,000 in October of 2022 (Dove Twitter Followers Statistics / Analytics — SPEAKRJ Stats, 2020).
Results
What worked was that the campaign was released at the best time because there is a huge need for stock images and for diversity seeing as 67% of women were wanting brands to take responsibly for the stock images that they utilize (Unilever PLC, 2022). There are hundreds of posts in support of the campaign and individuals using the hashtag, participating in the campaign, and engaging with Dove in their comments when they ask who they should feature next and give visibility to. Influencers from across the globe held giveaways in partnership with Dove to get their followers involved in the campaign. However, there were some things that did not work in this campaign. Dove produces a lot of campaigns and at times it can seem overwhelming when looking at their social media profiles because they have so many campaigns going on or if they are promoting an older campaign, it doesn’t give the campaign a true spotlight.
Although Project #ShowUs has done well as a campaign overall, it would’ve been more prudent to focus on one campaign at a time to give their followers more time to digest and interact with it. Furthermore, the hashtag makes it difficult to find posts pertaining to the campaign because it is so vague. There were other posts using the hashtag that had nothing to do with Project #ShowUs or Dove, this can make it difficult for others to find that hashtag to learn more about the campaign or even finding their own post if they participated or others posts as well. As stated previously, Instagram received more engagement than Twitter with an engagement percentage of 0.1722% in comparison to Twitter’s engagement percentage score which was far less with a percentage of 0.0144%. The content that received the most engagement were photographs posted on Instagram showcasing and celebrating women and non-binary individuals, in those posts Dove would often ask their followers to comment who they should feature next which increased the number of comments on those posts and its engagement.
Discussion
I believe that Dove’s Project #ShowUs campaign was ultimately successful because they were able to make a real change in how women are represented the media. Their success began when they were able to create a library of thousands of images of diverse women to be licensed and used, which is currently still being used. Although the hashtag show us is a vague, when you look up the hashtag on Instagram and Twitter, you are still able to search and find people using the hashtag and posting pictures of themselves celebrating and showcasing their differences. The longevity of this campaign several years later is a testament to its success. According to Razorfish’s website 2,500 companies and publications are using the images from the library including Apple and AirBnb (Project With a Purpose | Dove, n.d.):
Project #ShowUs continues to create global systemic change and encourage a more diverse, inclusive, and authentic representation of beauty. The global campaign for Dove has led to significant increase in brand health, including best-in-class results for YouTube and Facebook, and shattering benchmarks for engagement and UGC content (Project With a Purpose | Dove, n.d.).
The campaign has earned 40 awards from 14 international award shows from Shorty Social Good Awards, Cannes Lion, Global Effie Awards, and much more (Project With a Purpose | Dove, n.d.). After extensively analyzing this campaign, I have learned the power of social media. Although the numbers were low when analyzing the engagement and followers count, just looking at the statistics depicts that the campaign was not that successful. But that is not the case, I have learned the importance of not just relying on statistics but to look at the campaign overall. It is tempting to believe in the numbers because numbers do not lie, but it is vital to look at what the campaign has done for social media and society in general. It was a successful and continues to be a successful campaign because it has important messages at the center of the campaign. Beauty doesn’t have a certain look, diversity is needed in the media, and we define beauty.
References
Aslam, S. (2022, August 2). Instagram by the Numbers (2022): Stats, Demographics & Fun Facts. Omnicore Agency. Retrieved October 12, 2022, from https://www.omnicoreagency.com/instagram-statistics/
Dove. (n.d.). Unilever. Retrieved October 6, 2022, from https://www.unilever.com/brands/beauty-wellbeing/dove/
Dove Instagram Followers Statistics / Analytics — SPEAKRJ Stats. (2020, October 14). SPEAKRJ. Retrieved October 14, 2022, from https://www.speakrj.com/audit/report/dove/instagram/summary/2020-10-14/2022-10-14
Dove Twitter Followers Statistics / Analytics — SPEAKRJ Stats. (2020, October 14). SPEAKRJ. Retrieved October 14, 2022, from https://www.speakrj.com/audit/report/Dove/twitter/summary/2020-10-14/2022-10-14
I/O, C. (2021, July 26). Case study | Dove: Show Us. It’s On Us. World Federation of Advertisers. Retrieved October 7, 2022, from https://wfanet.org/knowledge/diversity-and-inclusion/item/2021/04/08/Case-study--Dove-Show-Us-Its-On-Us
Project with a Purpose | Dove. (n.d.). razorfish.com. Retrieved October 15, 2022, from https://www.razorfish.com/work/dove-project-show-us/
Statista. (2022, March 29). Twitter: distribution of global audiences 2021, by age group. Retrieved October 12, 2022, from https://www.statista.com/statistics/283119/age-distribution-of-global-twitter-users/
Take the Project #ShowUs Pledge. (n.d.). Dove US. Retrieved October 12, 2022, from https://www.dove.com/us/en/stories/campaigns/showus/make-my-pledge.html
Unilever PLC. (2022, June 24). Project #ShowUs: Dove’s disruptive new partnership to shatter stereotypes. Unilever. Retrieved October 7, 2022, from https://www.unilever.com/news/news-search/2019/project-showus-doves-disruptive-new-partnership-to-shatter-stereotypes/
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