Dove is globally committed to making beauty a source of confidence, not anxiety. But confronted with new challenges in a highly competitive market, Dove needed to rethink their comms model, with an emphasis on purpose-driven marketing. The brand needed to overcome the challenges of a cluttered “Femvertising” space, consumer suspicions surrounding advertising, high brand fragility, and a decrease in brand trust particularly amongst their younger, more socially aware Millennial & Gen Z audiences.

To overcome these landscape challenges and reassert themselves as a leader in the beauty category, Dove established a new marketing model: SAY less, DO more. To put their point of view on beauty into action, Dove wanted to take aim at liberating all women — inclusive of all female-identifying and non-binary individuals — from the oppressive stereotypes that limit them and create an experience of beauty that is universally accessible to women worldwide.

But Dove understood that societal change cannot be made by one brand alone, so they set out to identify and partner with the experts, change-makers, and like-minded organizations to help the brand create a more inclusive vision of beauty.

By combining research on global equality movements and media representation, we discovered that 70% of women — inclusive of all female-identifying and non-binary individuals — still don’t see themselves represented in media & advertising. Furthermore, 6-in-10 women feel that more diverse and authentic depictions of women would increase their own beauty confidence and that of the next generation, too.

Many images continue to impose unrealistic beauty standards that present a narrow view of who women are, what they should look like, and what they can achieve. Essentially, “you can’t be what you can’t see”. Every day, women’s lives are affected by these limitations, exclusions, and stereotypes. It affects their health, relationships, and opportunities in life. women worldwide are demanding change and accountability for how they are portrayed in media & advertising.

While narrow beauty stereotypes affect women worldwide, the nuances of exactly who and how they limit vary based on local values. Therefore we conducted market-specific research - across 39 different countries - to determine each country’s beauty ideal, who is represented in media, who is marginalized and why. The result was a data-informed approach to break stereotypical portrayals of women in ways most authentic to their own personal experience.

Dove has taken action with Getty Images and Girlgaze to create Project #ShowUs. It’s the world’s largest stock photo library created by women — inclusive of all female-identifying and non-binary individuals — to shatter beauty stereotypes by showing women as they are, not as others believe they should be.

Project #ShowUs features 5,000+ photographs of women from 39 countries. 100% created and photographed by women, with zero digital distortion. Available to all media & advertisers worldwide at GettyImages.com. And for the first time in stock photo history, every woman photographed has personally defined their own search tags, so they can be seen on their own terms.

This is just the beginning. 10% of every image licensed supports women photographers and further grows the collection. Together with women and industry change-makers worldwide, Project #ShowUs aims to show all women as they are, so they can show the world what’s possible.

Project #ShowUs launched on 27 March 2019, completely re-imagining how stock imagery is conceived, produced and distributed, setting a new standard for authentic representation of women — inclusive of all female-identifying and non-binary individuals.

In the first month, 80,000+ women worldwide raised their hand to support the collection, and 550+ brands, agencies and Fortune 500 companies showed interest in the collection. Great news, considering 62% of women believe #ShowUs images are representative of how most women in their country look, and 66% say they’re more likely to use/purchase brands that use #ShowUs images.

Project #ShowUs has inspired Getty Images to implement the groundbreaking self-defined photo tags across other stock photos on their platform. And they’ve established grants to support future female-identifying photographers, committing to more diverse representation behind the lens. It also facilitated the launch of Girlgaze’s global jobs platform and accounted for 116 paid jobs for female-identifying photographers worldwide.

To ensure authenticity, local stereotypes were researched in collaboration with women — inclusive of all female-identifying and non-binary individuals — from 39 countries around the world. Our ultimate goal was to find a balance between global impact and local resonance, for example:

-Women with disabilities are rarely featured in fulfilling relationships

-Older women are stereotyped in media as geriatric

-Women with visible skin conditions are encouraged to hide their bodies

-Women who don’t conform to traditionally feminine roles are deemed unbeautiful

-Higher-weight women are less likely to engage in sports due to inadequate clothing options

-Higher--weight women earn significantly less over a lifetime (~$200K)

-In the U.S., African-American/Natural hair is deemed ‘unprofessional’ in the workplace

-In China, unmarried women over 25 are deemed “leftover” – unfit for marriage

-In Asia, women are discouraged from exposing their skin to the sun because darker skin is considered “ugly”