Dove takes action

Unilever-owned brand Dove reopened the topic of retouching and society's often distorted perception of beauty by going to the source of the problem.

The brand and Ogilvy/OgilvyOne created "Beautify," a Photoshop action that artists download to create an effect with a single click.

Dove's tool claimed to add a skin glow effect to the subject in an image. But when users downloaded the action and applied it to their images, it actually reversed the previous unsaved alterations and cosmetic changes that had been applied to the image they were working on.

When the image eventually reverted to its original and untouched state, a message appeared asking the user to reconsider their perception of beauty.

Since its launch in April, the video has received more than 1.4 million views on YouTube, garnered over 81 million impressions and sparked a 40% growth in Twitter followers.