2025 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

“Dove Day” is a Dove campaign that shines a light on the self-esteem and mental health crisis affecting a generation of Canadian girls. It shows how this crisis impacts girls’ participation at school and harms their futures, as well as providing several specially-created resources to schools and students to help girls build their confidence, learn to love themselves, and flourish at school.

The independently-commissioned research uncovered a startling and tragic statistic: 2 in 3 girls stop participating in school because they hate their appearance. This reduced participation occurs in all aspects of school life: in the classroom, extracurricular activities, and social settings. They discovered that low self-esteem and body hate not only impacts millions of girls’ mental health and limits their overall happiness, but it is also incredibly damaging to their futures as it harms their ability to reach their potential and grow into the strong, confident women they deserve to be. As the world’s foremost champion of self-esteem, the agency knew
Dove had to act.

The goal was twofold. Firstly, they needed to create and disseminate new, specifically designed resources and toolkits for Dove Day – the campaign’s launch day – that would measurably improve girls’ confidence and self-esteem in social and academic environments; and secondly, to bring mass awareness to both the link between self-esteem and decreased participation in school, and to the resources Dove were providing.

The core resource they created is the “Dove Day” toolkit: a series of six online interactive workshops, each one 45-60 minutes in length, made specifically for students. The workshops blend class discussions, small-group activities, engaging videos, and activity worksheets, enabling each girl to find a learning
format that suits her.

Through research, the agency uncovered the most damaging and widespread issues facing teenage Canadian girls and turned each one into a workshop topic. These included unrealistic appearance ideals affecting confidence in young people, the impact of social media, celebrity culture and advertising on self-esteem, identifying and challenging appearance-based discrimination, and body activism and achieving positive behaviour change.

Research and feedback have shown that students who attend the six “Dove Day” workshops have improved body image, higher self-esteem, and feel more confident participating in social and academic activities.

To create mass awareness of the “Dove Day” toolkit, the agency created a film, ‘Most Likely To, ’ that stars five real girls – Alyssa, Lorelai, Olive, Sophia, Tajiah – sharing their real stories of how low self-esteem has impacted their
participation at school.

To capture how unrelenting and all-consuming low self-esteem and body hate is for girls, the film is a single 124-second shot, creating an authentic, immersive experience that puts them in each girl’s shoes and shows every girl watching that she isn’t alone in her feelings of low self-esteem.

The film drove parents, teachers and schools to sign up for the
“Dove Day” workshops.

The film’s popularity led to exceptional results: within 24 hours of the film’s launch, 365 schools signed up for the workshops.

On “Dove Day” – October 10th – the live-streamed workshop sessions were viewed by over 400,000 Canadian students, with X million more watching the
workshops on-demand since.

Credits

CLIENT
Brand: Dove Canada
Title: “Most Likely To”
General Manager, Personal Care: Divya Singh Dove Canada Marketing Lead: Laura Douglas Media Company: PHD Canada
PR Company: Edelman Canada
AGENCY
Agency: Ogilvy Canada
Chief Creative Officer: Francesco Grandi
Creative Director: Luke Woodard
Creative Director: Morgan Starr
Copywriter: Morgan Starr, Phil Gull
Art Director: Luke Woodard, Pedro Minari, Helen Giles Chief Strategy Officer: Jeremy Daly
Strategy Director: Michael Mcdonald-Beraskow
Chief Client Officer: Chris Perron
Account Director: Rohan Mehra
Account Supervisor: Katie Parker
Co-Director, Production: Jaclyn Garfinkle
Co-Director, Production: Alexandre Andre
PRODUCTION
Production Company: Smuggler @ Soft Citizen Founding Partner: Patrick Milling-Smith Founding Partner: Brian Carmody
Chief Operating Officer: Andrew Colón Managing Director: Sue Yeon Ahn
Managing Director: Eva Preger
Executive Producer: Rob Burns, Eva Preger, Link York Line Producer: Rob Jacklin
Director of Photography: Juliette Lossky
Production Designer: Pink Calculator
Casting: Milo Casting
Wardrobe: Angela Kozsuta
Makeup: Shannon Burnett
Post Production: Cabin
Editor: Nina Sacharow
Transfer Facility: Alter Ego
Colourist: Eric Whipp
Online Facility: Cabin VFX
Music House: Big Sync / Boombox