What happens when two-thirds of teenage girls hold back in the classroom simply because they dislike how they look? This Dove – Most Likely To (Case Study) unpacks how Dove and Ogilvy inverted the classic high school yearbook superlative to expose the academic toll of low body confidence – driving 403 school enrollments in 48 hours, reaching 400,000+ students, and securing a $1.5M federal government investment.
Background
Teenage girls absorb information rapidly, yet today’s hyper-algorithmic social media landscape is teaching an entire generation a destructive lesson: to hate their own reflection. Bombarded daily by unattainable beauty standards, toxic aesthetic trends, and harmful influencer advice, young girls are being conditioned to scrutinize and reject every inch of their bodies. Crucially, this crisis extends far beyond immediate emotional distress – it actively derails their long-term futures.
Independently commissioned research by Dove uncovered an alarming behavioral reality: 2 in 3 teenage girls stop participating in school activities because they feel insecure about their appearance. This withdrawal permeates every corner of academic life, from raising a hand in the classroom to trying out for extracurricular clubs and navigating everyday social interactions. By keeping girls on the sidelines during their formative years, body dissatisfaction directly restricts their academic attainment and limits their lifelong potential.
While digital culture teaches girls self-criticism, virtually no institution systematically teaches them the most vital life skill of all: self-confidence. As the world’s leading corporate advocate for body confidence through the Dove Self-Esteem Project, the brand set a dual mandate for its flagship Dove Day launch:
- Deliver Actionable Educational Tools: Develop and distribute specialized, classroom-ready resources engineered to measurably elevate girls’ confidence across both academic and social environments.
- Expose the Academic Cost of Low Self-Esteem: Generate mass public awareness connecting body dissatisfaction to declining school participation – compelling educators to treat confidence as a core curriculum subject just as essential as Mathematics or English.
Creative Idea
Conceptualized in partnership with creative agency Ogilvy, the Dove Most Likely To campaign paired an integrated multimedia wake-up call (spanning film, out-of-home, and print) with a tangible pedagogical solution: Confidence Classes.
To dramatize how appearance anxiety steals a young woman’s future, the creative platform subverted the beloved high school yearbook tradition of “Most Likely To” superlatives. Whereas yearbook predictions typically celebrate bright, ambitious milestones – such as “Most Likely to Become Prime Minister” or “Most Likely to Change the World” – Dove flipped the trope to reveal the quiet academic casualties caused by body insecurity, such as “Most Likely to Never Raise Her Hand” or “Most Likely to Quit the Team.”
Rather than merely stating the statistic, the campaign immersed viewers directly inside the suffocating headspace of a teenage girl through a raw hero film captured in a single, uninterrupted 124-second camera take. Every asset in the integrated ecosystem funneled educators, parents, and students toward Confidence Classes – a suite of free, 60-minute, academically accredited in-school workshops combining guided group discussions, interactive worksheets, and peer exercises designed to permanently reshape how schools teach self-worth.
Insights & Strategy
While public discourse had long recognized that poor body image harms teenage mental health and emotional well-being, the strategic breakthrough of the Dove – Most Likely To (Case Study) was proving that low self-esteem actively sabotages a girl’s educational trajectory and future career opportunities.
Anchored in the proprietary research insight that two out of three girls opt out of school participation due to appearance anxiety, the strategy bridged emotional storytelling with institutional utility:
- Turning Awareness into Curriculum Adoption: A powerful film alone cannot fix classroom withdrawal unless teachers are equipped with the right tools. By building the campaign around accredited Confidence Classes, Dove gave educators an immediate, turnkey way to act on the emotional urgency sparked by the film.
- Surrounding the School Ecosystem: To drive rapid institutional adoption on Dove Day, the media and outreach strategy simultaneously targeted the three pillars of a student’s support system – teachers, parents, and the students themselves – using hyper-targeted OOH placements directly outside Canadian high schools to drive traffic to Dove’s educational hub.
Execution
Directed by Academy Award-nominated filmmaker Henry-Alex Rubin, the Most Likely To hero film prioritized radical authenticity over commercial polish:
- Real Students, True Lived Experiences: Every single individual on screen – from the background students in the hallways to the five lead protagonists (Alyssa, Lorelai, Olive, Sophia, and Tajiah) – was a real high school student with zero prior commercial acting experience. Selected across three rounds of in-depth personal interviews, each girl’s on-screen moment was written directly from her own real-life struggles with body insecurity and academic withdrawal.
- The Unbroken 124-Second Single Take: To mirror the inescapable, all-consuming pressure teenage girls navigate every single school day, the entire film was choreographed and captured in one continuous, 124-second in-camera shot with zero hidden cuts or digital stitches.
- Three-Pronged Stakeholder Rollout: To maximize classroom enrollment across Canada, Dove executed a synchronized outreach blitz:
- Educators & School Boards: Direct institutional partnerships with Canadian school boards encouraged faculty to integrate the accredited workshops directly into lesson plans.
- Parents: High-profile broadcast segments on Breakfast Television featured campaign airings alongside live interviews with the five student leads, paired with targeted CRM email outreach urging parents to request Confidence Classes at their local schools.
- Students: Contextual OOH billboards surrounded Canadian high school perimeters, while relatable teen and young-adult creators shared their own high school self-esteem journeys on social media to motivate peer participation.
Results
By exposing the link between body image and educational attainment, the Dove – Most Likely To (Case Study) transformed a single-day brand activation into a permanent shift in Canadian education and federal policy:
Classroom Adoption & Record Engagement
- 403 schools enrolled within the first 48 hours of the campaign launch.
- 400,000+ Canadian students reached during the live-streamed Dove Day workshop sessions, with millions more subsequently accessing the Confidence Classes curriculum on-demand.
- Achieved the highest engagement and course-completion rates in Dove’s history for an educational resource, with participating students reporting measurable improvements in body image, self-esteem, and active classroom participation.
Legislative & National Policy Impact
- $1.5 Million Federal Investment: The cultural and institutional momentum generated by the campaign directly influenced the Canadian Federal Government to invest $1.5 million toward expanding body-confidence education programs across national schools.
- Parliamentary Recognition: The campaign and Dove’s educational advocacy were spontaneously commended on the floor of the Canadian Parliament by multiple sitting Members of Parliament.
- Permanent Curriculum Integration: Educators across Canada officially embedded Confidence Classes into their ongoing school curricula – proving that self-confidence is one of the most important lessons a student can learn.
Case Film
Credits
- Client: Unilever
- Brand: Dove
- Advertising Agency: Ogilvy Canada
- Production Company: Smuggler @ Soft Citizen
- Media Company: PHD Canada
- Music House: Big Sync; Boombox
- Transfer Facility: Alter Ego
- Casting Agency: MiLO
- Post Production Company: Cabin Edit
- PR Agency: Edelman Canada