- Co-Create, Don’t Direct: Dove empowered creators to own tone, visuals, and storytelling—delivering richer authenticity.
- Speed Is a Competitive Edge: From concept to live OOH in 48 hours, rapid co-creation matches social media’s pace.
- Scale with Purpose: Leveraging long-standing creator partnerships ensures campaigns stay true to brand values.
- Hyper-Local Meets Global: Ambitious goal of one influencer per zip code demonstrates precision targeting at scale.
- Multichannel Amplification: Elevating unfiltered social content into high-impact OOH deepens cultural relevance.
Today’s influencer marketers aren’t just selecting creators—they’re building operational ecosystems around them. Dove’s campaign isn’t a feel-good exception; it’s a structural overhaul of how briefs, production timelines, and brand purpose converge in the real world. This section walks through the systems behind Dove’s creator-first execution: from emotional insight sourcing to scalable briefing and long-term co-creation infrastructure. Senior marketers should study not just the narrative, but the repeatable mechanisms that enabled Dove to build cultural relevance faster than competitors tied to legacy production cycles.
Leveraging long-term creator partnerships, Dove amplified authenticity and community reach—without ever calling ‘action’.
When Fernando Fernandez stepped into his role as Unilever CEO in March, he didn’t mince words: half of the company’s ad budget will shift to social channels, and influencer collaborations will expand twenty-fold.
For Dove, Unilever’s flagship beauty brand, that executive mandate wasn’t a radical pivot but an acceleration of an existing trajectory. With the launch of #ShareTheFirst, Dove demonstrated exactly how a true creator-first campaign can deliver speed, scale, and purpose in tandem, offering a blueprint for every senior marketer seeking to thrive in today’s social-driven landscape.
Insight-Driven, Creator-Led Strategy
Dove’s two-decade commitment to “Real Beauty” has always been underpinned by consumer research. In preparing #ShareTheFirst, Dove discovered that 9 in 10 women snap up to 50 photos before selecting one to post, and 6 in 10 won’t share their “happy” moments at all because they’re dissatisfied with their appearance.
Strategic Rationale: By tapping into social anxiety, Dove turned an emotional insight into a rallying cry: reclaim the joy of unfiltered self-expression.
Rather than shoe-horning influencers into pre-approved scripts or studio-filmed spots, Dove enlisted creators as full partners. From ideation to execution, every element—including tone of voice, visual style, and messaging—originated in the hands of trusted community voices.
This “Other’s Say” approach amplifies authenticity: creators know their audiences’ language, cultural touchpoints, and moments of vulnerability better than any centralized marketing team.
For marketers building their own insight-driven creator campaigns, consider integrating passive research tools like Instagram poll tracking or TikTok comment scraping using tools such as Brandwatch or Dash Hudson. These platforms can surface unprompted audience anxieties—like “filter fatigue” or fear of real-time posting—that often hide in plain sight. Turn these micro-truths into emotional springboards for your briefs. In Dove’s case, the insight didn’t come from product dissatisfaction—it came from platform behavior: delayed posting, draft hoarding, and over-edits. Your creators likely already know these patterns—formalize them into your campaign’s emotional spine.
Rapid Co-Creation: From Brief to Broadcast in 48 Hours
Speed is no longer a luxury—it’s the difference between trend participation and trend irrelevance. Most brands operate on campaign cycles that lag behind platform culture, with weeks of reviews, edits, and performance paralysis. Dove rewired that process by building “brief-to-live” agility into the campaign structure. This section dissects how marketers can rethink briefing and approval workflows not as bottlenecks, but as co-creative accelerants—and how creator autonomy, operational decentralization, and real-time review loops drive relevance at scale.
Traditional campaign development, creative briefs, agency back-and-forth, and production shoots can take months. Dove compressed that entire cycle into two days for some markets.
- Micro-Briefing: Working with Edelman, Dove provided a succinct creative brief anchored in the key insight (“share your first, unedited photo”).
- Decentralized Creation: More than 100 global creators, each fluent in their region’s nuances, produced native-style content without studio setups or retakes.
- Real-Time Feedback Loop: Content assets were reviewed, optimized for brand fit, and distributed—all within a 48-hour window.
Operational Insight: Empowering regional creators not only accelerates turnaround but generates hyper-local relevance. When you give three creators the same brief, you get three distinct executions—each tailored to its community’s pulse.
Out-of-Home Reinvention: Bridging Digital and Physical Worlds
Dove didn’t confine #ShareTheFirst to social feeds. In London’s Liverpool Street Station, 64 digital screens mimicked a scrolling camera roll, cycling through near-identical selfies before revealing each creator’s unfiltered “first” shot.
- Reach & Impact: Liverpool Street handles over 60 million passengers annually—an audience scale few social posts can match.
- Cultural Amplification: By bringing user-generated imagery into a high-traffic transit hub, Dove transformed a private social ritual into a public conversation.
If OOH activations aren’t feasible for your brand’s budget, similar amplification can be achieved through retail media screens, in-app takeovers, or collabs with digital signage networks like Firefly or GSTV. The goal isn’t format replication—it’s extending social storytelling into unscrollable moments. For example, TikTok-style campaign clips can run across point-of-sale kiosks or cinema pre-rolls to bring creator-first narratives to passive audiences. Dove’s cultural lift didn’t come from billboards alone—it came from making social-born content culturally interruptive in places where people weren’t expecting it.
Expert Takeaway: Integrating earned content into OOH placements elevates social advocacy into shared cultural moments—and offers measurable lift in unaided brand recall among non-social audiences.
Purpose at the Core: Sustaining Long-Term Creator Partnerships
What sets Dove’s approach apart isn’t just speed or scale—it’s the depth of its creator relationships. Many campaign creators have collaborated with Dove since 2017, fostering trust that transcends single‐post transactions.
This foundation allowed Dove to bypass rigid approvals and studio controls, relying instead on creators’ instincts to drive tone and authenticity.
- Purpose Alignment: Dove’s “No Digital Distortion” pledge and refusal to use AI-altered imagery reinforce the brand’s commitment to realness.
- Community Co-Ownership: Creators weren’t hired for a paycheck; they were co-authors of a movement championing spontaneous self-confidence.
To operationalize long-term creator partnerships, marketers must move beyond one-off contract templates. Build quarterly alignment cadences with creators—similar to how you'd treat retained freelancers. Use shared Notion boards or platforms like Aspire or Grin to track collaboration history, performance evolution, and shared values. This isn't just CRM—it’s purpose-mapping at scale. By investing in continuity tools and co-planning rituals, you foster creator loyalty, ensure brand alignment across campaigns, and reduce onboarding overhead over time.
Strategic Imperative: For senior marketers, investing in long-term creator ecosystems—rather than one-off influencer activations—yields richer storytelling, faster execution, and campaigns rooted in genuine cultural insights.
Actionable Recommendations for Expert Marketers
- Anchor in Deep Insights: Start with a research-backed consumer truth that resonates emotionally and socially.
- Empower Creator Autonomy: Give seasoned creators a clear brief and license to interpret it for their communities, then move swiftly to production.
- Merge Channels for Cultural Moments: Repurpose high-engagement social content into OOH or experiential touchpoints to broaden impact.
- Build Enduring Ecosystems: Cultivate multi-year relationships with creators aligned to your brand purpose; this trust accelerates co-creation and enhances authenticity.
- Measure Beyond Vanity Metrics: Track campaign velocity (time from brief to publish), engagement lift in target segments, and brand sentiment shifts—especially in non-social audiences reached via OOH.
This isn’t just a new way of working—it’s a survival strategy. As Gen Z and Millennial trust in polished brand comms erodes, creator-first campaigns aren't optional; they’re your fastest route to credibility. By embedding these systems now—before your competitors do—you future-proof your brand’s storytelling model and gain first-mover advantage in creator loyalty, cultural fluency, and content velocity.
Redefining the Playbook
Dove’s #ShareTheFirst campaign exemplifies how a purpose-driven, creator-first model can outpace traditional production cycles, deepen community resonance, and translate social insights into real-world cultural impact.
As Unilever steers 50% of its ad spend toward social channels and broadens its creator network twenty-fold, Dove’s early success offers a blueprint: empower creators, embed brand purpose, and bridge digital and physical landscapes to tell stories that genuinely resonate.
For senior marketers, the message is clear—embrace the creator economy not as a tactic but as the cornerstone of modern brand storytelling
