The Chinese beauty market is an extremely crowded space where fierce fights for consumers’ wallet and mind space happen everyday. Both global and local brands are investing heavily to emerge from this complicated competitive scene.

And Dove, the global beauty brand that’s been advocating “real beauty” for over 10 years, is losing its relevance and saliency amongst Chinese women. Brand equities such “a brand that promotes real beauty” or “a brand that makes women feel confident” have declined and thus endangering our business in the long term.

Our challenge is to reconnect with Chinese women and boost the impact of Dove’ beauty point of view— beauty should be a source of confidence, not anxiety.

We leverage on Fan Bingbing’s fame and invited Chinese women with the same name to showcase their beauty that’s unique and different from the idealistic beautiful look that is represented by the celebrity.

By doing so, they seek to prove that looking different to the ideal can be beautiful and desirable.

We launch the campaign on June 13th, during the Shanghai Film Festival season, where Fan Bingbing is seen as an important icon.

A film and a social activation with a dozen real women called Bingbing start to take over Weibo, WeChat and various popular SNS to ignite the conversation. At the same, we coop with local beauty KOLs to extend the reach and depth of the conversation.

The campaign quickly got viral and a second phase showcasing famous social KOLs who don't have the 'ideal beauty' looks quickly caused another wave of excitement on the social network environment.