Perception vs. Reality

As we close out the quarter and end the class, I wanted to present the class with this final blog post about a company who is using a web 2.0 technology in an innovative way. The company that I am focusing on is Dove, which is a company that is most famous for their line of toiletries. A few years ago, in 2013, they launched one of their many "feel good" campaigns which was targeted at women and how confident they were in themselves. The campaign consisted of two parts, the first was to have people convey to an artist how they saw themselves and he would draw them without ever seeing them. The second part consisted of complete strangers describing the same people to the artist and comparing the two pictures which is where the perception vs. reality concept comes into play.

Dove's Real Beauty Sketches campaign was one of the more creative takes on a major problem we have in our society, on a social and personal level. Being a woman, I can definitely relate to this campaign due to the fact that I myself have been hard on myself or compared my looks to other women's based on what society has lead us to believe. Even if you tap into online platforms such as twitter or tumblr, it's not unusual too come across a discussion or two about how women are forced to take on these unattainable goals of how they should look and present themselves.

The platform that Dove decided to premiere their campaign was Youtube. Which was a smart move for them because Youtube is one of the biggest and fastest growing video sharing websites that there is in this day and age. Not only does having this video on Youtube allow for convenience but it also allows users to share the video to different platforms thus increasing the exposure and the audience that Dove serves. I'm a huge fan of this campaign because it sheds light to a real problem that we don't think about too often but one that still has a huge impact on us.