We put our feelers out into the social space online to understand what Chinese women thought about beauty, how they rationalized buying cosmetics and toiletries, and how that made them feel. A campaign called “You Are a Beauty Story” was born.Through stories sourced from online conversations we developed three story lines centred around a woman comfortable in her own skin. These stories were turned into micro movies, written and directed by Rain Li, one of China’s leading female directors. The movies starred three regular women that shared our brand’s beauty values.These short films were screened on China’s largest video portal Tudou and social platform Sina Weibo. To bring women closer to the “you are a beauty story” message, we used rich ad formats that demoed trailers. To boost our campaign, we also kick started a fan base on Weibo, prompting women to declare themselves or their friends “beautiful”.

Business results-Dove sales up 90% (Dec 2011, YoY)-Outperformed category growth x9-Spend only 29% of what competitors spend within the categoryBrand health:-Aided brand awareness increased 13.7%-Brand favorability increased 29% and purchase intent by 35%.

-Online media contributed to 28% of Dove’s UBA (MB, 06/2011) Online performance:-4.2 million visitors-1.6 million video views-#1 Weibo brand account within the category-3,000+ fans within first 4 hours-131,345 Weibo fans that influenced 61,251,170 fans on Weibo (175%+ vs. planned results)Source: MillwardBrown, Unilever