Mindshare and Dove uncover real beauty

In 2016, the findings of the third Dove Global Beauty and Confidence Report stated that 68 per cent of women cannot identify with the images they see in ads. This not only affects how women see themselves, it also hurts margins.

Mindshare Denmark decided to do something about this. They came up with Image_Hack – a Dove-branded initiative that strives to change the stereotypical way women are portrayed in media and marketing. “By hacking stock sites,” says the Imagehack.org website, “we can alter the search results, and then alter the media landscape.” The site encourages advertisers to hack the industry (by persuading them to change the images they used in their next ad) to a less stereotypical and more equal image of women. Dove, too used images from this initiative for its campaigns.

Mindshare joined hands with some of the best photographers in the ad world and took photographs of “strong, independent and original women in non-stereotypical settings”. Some of these photos were uploaded to stock sites and tagged to “alter their algorithms to give searchers a realistic picture of today’s woman. Then it took to the biggest stock photography site, Shutterstock, and uploaded and tagged thousands of the photographs that had been collected.

However, they first had to persuade agencies and brands to look at this positively. Mindshare used a series of outdoor ads placed outside major agencies in Denmark encouraging the latter to use these images and transform the way women are portrayed in ads. The agencies responded and downloaded images using them in ads for 42 brands. It remains to be seen whether this experiment will unleash the wave that Mindshare expects.

Source : http://www.adweek.com/creativity/how-dove-is-hacking-photography-to-change-the-way-advertising-depicts-women/