The Drum Awards for Marketing - Extended Deadline

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By John McCarthy, Opinion Editor

February 20, 2015 | 3 min read

Dove has launched the #SpeakBeautiful campaign to coincide with the Academy Awards aimed at drawing the venom out of social media and combat negative body image tweets.

Working with Twitter, Dove enlisted Danah Boyd, a principle research at Microsoft Research, to conduct a survey into how women talk about body issues online.

The data was applied to the ad which states: "Last year women sent over five million negative tweets about beauty and body image. But it only takes one positive tweet to start a trend. Let’s change the way we talk about beauty on social media."

Displaying negative tweets such as ‘Wooo she’s FAT and UGLY’ as dominoes, the slot set to air during the Academy Awards pre-show on Sunday, looks to show how net nastiness can be toppled with a slight change of perception.

The social media campaign will reach its peak on Oscar night although the healthcare brand is already rounding up followers and spreading the word on Twitter.

Microsoft researcher Danah Boyd said: “Social media is playing a critical role in showing and shaping how women and girls feel about themselves, yet women do not realise how online dialogue can contribute to negative mindsets and behaviour towards beauty both on and offline.

“We women have an incredible opportunity to be more thoughtful about how we speak about ourselves and others on social media. The power is truly at our fingertips.”

Jennifer Bremner, director of marketing at Dove, added: “Dove has long been committed to instilling self-esteem in the next generation, and we know that women today are 50 per cent more likely to say something negative about themselves, than positive, on social media.

“Ideas and opinions about body image are now fluidly shared every second through social feeds, and sometimes we do not fully realise the resounding impact of the words in even one post."

Bremner concluded: "The power to #SpeakBeautiful is in the hands of us all–we can positively change the way future generations express themselves online."

The campaign comes after untouched images of Beyonce leaked earlier this week prompting a slew of negative tweets about the star’s appearance.

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