Ads Gone Viral - Dove's 'Real Beauty Sketches'

Dove's 'Real Beauty Sketches' is a short video in which an FBI-trained sketch artist draws 'real' women based on their own descriptions of how they see themselves and how a stranger sees them. The stranger's descriptions were more often than not more stereotypically attractive and similar to what the women actually looked like. The sketches drawn according to the women's descriptions of themselves are less stereotypically attractive and are less similar to what the women actually look like. The video hammers home Dove's point that women are often overly critical of their appearances and don't see their true beauty. The video was a huge worldwide viral success—despite some criticisms—being uploaded in 25 languages to 33 of Dove's Youtube channels and viewed millions of times in more than 110 countries.

The ad embodies the 6 sticky principles:

1. Simplicity: Very simple concept as it features 'real women', strangers, an a FBI-trained sketch artist and the concept of 'real beauty'. The video ended with the simple but memorable tagline, "You are more beautiful than you think."
2. Unexpectedness: The viewer is not sure what is happening when the video starts, it rolls out like a story, and the viewer gets wrapped-up in the story. Why they are being sketched, what do the sketches look like and what will the reactions be to the sketches? 
3. Concreteness: Dove created this campaign based on the idea to celebrate women's natural beauty. This video's concrete images are 'real' women, strangers, an FBI-trained sketch artist, the sketches and the reactions of the 'real' women to the sketches. 
4. Credibility: The use of an FBI-trained sketch artist and 'real' women brought a lot of credibility to this video for viewers. These women looked just like women we knew—our mothers, sisters, daughters, friends and even ourselves—and so we related to the women in the video and their self-criticism. This campaign was also built on the back of many years of 'real beauty' ad campaigns by Dove.
5. Emotions: The video is elicited strong responses from viewers. Most women, including myself, will agree that we are our own worst beauty critics, and so this ad spoke to many of women (and men) all around the world.The teary emotional reactions of the women looked heartfelt. 
6. Stories: The story that many women do not see their own true natural beauty, and should believe that they are in fact "more beautiful than they think", was a very powerful story that Dove developed. It was a story that millions of us around the world wanted to share with each other, by sharing this video.