Ogilvy: Dove’s Toxic Influence

Two in every three girls spend more than an hour a day on social media – more time than they spend with their friends.1 The harmful beauty trends, hacks and products they are exposed to are increasingly linked to a rise in depression and teen suicide.

The algorithms that feed young girls toxic beauty advice show parents completely different content on the same platforms. As part of Dove’s Self-Esteem Project, Ogilvy was tasked with spotlighting the issue of toxic advice for parents who are unaware of what their daughters see online.

The creative idea was to use deepfake technology to put the words of toxic influencers – words heard every day by teenage girls – into the mouth of the one person they trust most in the world: their mother.

The agency tracked 50 toxic trends in real-time across multiple social platforms, building fake transcripts based on the most popular phrases of hundreds of toxic influencers. These words were then ‘spoken’ by deepfake versions of their mother in an eye-opening shareable film that rolled out across 18 markets – bringing the issue to light across the world and igniting millions of conversations between parents and their daughters.

The campaign received 115.5m organic views and 3.1bn impressions.