Early into the pandemic, Dove set out to celebrate the bravery of front-line healthcare workers. However, photographers were not permitted into the impacted hospitals.

This constraint led to a powerful solution: to use the “selfie” photographs that front-healthcare workers were sharing on their personal social media accounts. Their images conveyed the physical and mental toll of the pandemic with raw, unretouched authenticity.

Searching hashtags on various social platforms, we found real healthcare workers’ personal images and then DM’d them to invite them to participate. We then juxtaposed the images of their battle-worn faces with our message.

Working with hospitals in the USA, Russia, Spain and South Africa, we collected data on workers’ shift patterns and bought digital out of home media adjacent to the most overwhelmed hospitals, broadcasting our campaign when healthcare workers started or ended their shifts, giving frontline workers a dose of encouragement to keep on saving lives.

Courage is beautiful

Our OOH campaign consisted of 6 Sheet and 48 Sheet posters.