Dove's Social Media Self Esteem Mission

Since 2009 Dove has been focused on self esteem for girls.  It all began with Dove's evolution television campaign where a woman was taken from her everyday look to supermodel with a time lapse hair and makeup session.  She is then photographed and her picture enhanced via photoshop or some other picture enhancing program where the model's featured were changed.  At the end it makes a statement like "No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted." 

Dove has taken great strides in their use of not just media but social media in their pursuit to make every girl love herself just as she is.  Dove is the most successful in this pursuit on YouTube.  At the time of this post, Dove's US channel only has 23,182 subscribers however, their latest videos have garnished almost 70 million views. Dove Real Beauty sketches is a highly watched YouTube video with over 55 million views speaks to how woman view themselves versus what other people see.  The woman were asked to describe themselves to a forensic sketch artist who cannot see them.  Later another person who the women were paired up with are asked to describe the woman to the sketch artist.  In every instance, the picture description from the woman herself is far more unattractive than the depiction given by their counterpart.  Another great video is Dove's Camera Shy video, showing how many women don't want to caught on video or in photographs.

Aside from YouTube, Dove's website is a great source for woman and girls.  Dove offers self esteem kits to girls as well as guides to mothers instructing them how to talk to their daughters about self esteem.  Dove's Self Esteem Project offers not only instructions but an annual Dove Self Esteem Weekend to celebrate a girl's real beauty with performances, exercises, speakers and fun activities designed to build up confidence and celebrate beauty.  The Self Esteem Project has a commitment to enroll over 15 million girls by 2015, as of this post that number is already 11 million.  The Dove website also has a Social Mission menu button that has a pull down menu with items such as "Make Girls Unstoppable" and "Self Esteem Kit and Resources;" all of which further push their campaign of helping women and girls love themselves, and of course using Dove products to complete this mission.