Viral Now: Beauty is a Choice

Dove's global activation, executed across five cities, is asking women to choose whether they consider themselves 'beautiful' or 'average'.

How many times do we look in the mirror to only spot imperfections? Women around the world translate beauty with how they are being perceived by others. However, Dove, a skincare brand known for creating innovative advertising, is urging women to make an individual choice of being beautiful.

The brand released a new video as a part of its 'Real Beauty' campaign. The three-minute-long video titled 'Choose Beautiful' is shot in San Francisco, London, Delhi, Shanghai and Sao Paulo by director Paul Dektor.

The video features an activation done by Ogilvy &Mather which depicts women's reactions when presented with the choice of walking through a door marked 'Beautiful' or the one marked 'Average'. Like the previous videos executed by Dove, this also has a similar outcome - with a large number of women choosing the average door to walk through.

One of the women in Shanghai featured in the video remarks, "Beautiful to me is way too far out of reach," summing up the attitude of many women who made the decision to walk through the 'Average' door. Many of them later regretted their choice in an interview. There were some who made a conscious decision to not be bogged down by societal or peer pressure and chose to be beautiful. The video features a middle-aged mother dragging her teenage daughter towards the 'Beautiful' door and later confesses that "more and more young women should make this choice."

The video ends by asking viewers which door they would choose, with each choice linking to the campaign's interactive Tumblr page. The page has a running countdown where 1.7 lakh women have chosen to be beautiful. The page also features interesting activities like inspiring others to be beautiful and mini meditation kits that women can download.

Uploaded on YouTube on April 7, the 'Choose Beautiful' video has garnered 2.3 million views as of Thursday evening.

Dove's earlier campaigns in the 'Real Beauty' series include Legacy, Patches and Real Beauty Sketches, where the brand urged women to explore the real meaning of beauty which lies beyond physicality.

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