india

Dove | Let's Break the Rules of Beauty

Every Sunday in the Times of India and Hindustan Times, there are pages of matrimonial ads (60% of Indian marriages are arranged) that read like this: Good family seeking potential candidates for their son. Girl must be fair, tall, slim, long hair, well-educated and modest. This is the Bollywood ideal. But in a country of 631 million women, this ideal is too narrow, too unrealistic and completely overlooks all the other faces of beauty. India was ripe for Dove's Beauty POV. Creative development began with a hothouse with several teams from our Mumbai office. From these ideas, a London team developed this campaign: Let's break the rules of beauty. The campaign began with a series of recruitment ads in the matrimonial, employment and Bollywood audition sections of the major newspapers. At first the Times of India even refused to run our ad.  We literally looked at over a thousand women from across the sub-continent and landed on our 97 cast members.  Filming happened at an important Bollywood studio (how ironic) with a well-known indie director, Pan Nalin and his entire Indian crew. Our ladies were photographed by Melanie Acevedo and as I said goodbye to each of them, many broke down in tears as they whispered to me: "No one has ever told me I was beautiful...until now."