Lock in a year of Digiday+ for 35% less. Ends May 29.
Dove has gotten sneaky with its latest attempt to promote its message of positive body image and self esteem for women.
Women are faced with a lot of pressure when it comes to their appearance. Thanks to the media’s excessive photoshopping and portrayal of the ideal woman as tall, thin, with flawless skin and perfect teeth, women are held to an unrealistic standard of beauty. Dove Canada wanted to go directly to the source to those who create these retouched images: art directors, graphic designers and photo retouchers. So the brand, with the help of Ogilvy Toronto, created a Photoshop Action called “Beautify.”
Dove made it look like the action adds a nice “skin glow” to images but in fact, it undoes retouching in images to restore the female form to its original, natural state. Dove planted stories and links about this new free beautifying Photoshop tool on sites that art directors and photo retouchers visit regularly to get them to download the action and use it.
When a photo retoucher would apply the “Beautify” action to their retouched image, the “Beautify” action would actually act as a Trojan Horse and undo all of the retoucher’s work and slap this message on the photo: “Don’t manipulate our perceptions of real beauty.” There is also a note that the retoucher can just go back to undo the action.
It’s really cool to see a brand consistently take such a strong, positive stance and adopt hacker behavior to get the message across. Check out the video below to see how it works.
More in Marketing
As OpenAI’s ChatGPT ad delivery improves, the doubts it created aren’t so easily fixed
The ad delivery has improved in the past few weeks, but some are now hesitant until those issues are completely ironed out.
Google’s latest commerce moves deepen the battle over agentic shopping
Google’s aim to own the entire shopper journey is heating up the agentic commerce battle against Amazon’s Alexa and rivals like TikTok Shop.
TikTok Shop says sales from U.S. small businesses climbed 66% in 2025
U.S. small businesses on TikTok Shop increased sales by 66% in 2025 compared to the year before.