Dove's #KeepHerConfident Moves Metrics and Wins Awards

The Challenge

What if tennis legend Venus Williams quit sports at age 14? Fortunately, that didn’t happen. But it is exactly what’s happening with young women in sports today. Research from Dove found that 45% of girls quit sports by age 14. And it’s not because these young athletes stopped loving the game—but because they stopped loving their bodies.

Lauded for a history of body-positive, female-empowerment initiatives, Dove set out to inform parents, coaches, and fans while inspiring young women to stay in the game. The omnichannel #KeepHerConfident purpose campaign was launched with collaboration from prominent brands and included a philanthropic component. The campaign also involved female athletes like Venus to boost both relevance and inspiration. 

The Solution

The brand knew personal storytelling was needed for success and impact—and that meant audio was essential. Dove worked with our in-house audio creative agency Studio Resonate for another award-winning audio campaign.

We partnered with TOGETHXR to create custom content that shined a light on the brand’s important message. The audio campaign launch aligned with the airing of Dove’s #KeepHerConfident television ad during the 2024 Super Bowl.

The goal: Let’s stop her next game from becoming her last.

Our strategy: Replace negative self-talk with positive audio affirmations, and get Dove’s message heard by as many listeners as possible by taking a cross-platform approach that amplified talent partnerships.

Influencer-style Messaging

The campaign leveraged the voices of both well-known and up-and-coming female athletes as well as the parents of young women in sports to bring both authenticity and weight to the message. A total of 14 different talent voices came together to speak to Dove’s #KeepHerConfident message.

The campaign involved several components, including:

• Audio ads featuring clips from interviews with female athletes

• 3D audio spots with Venus Williams

• A custom podcast episode with Venus Williams

• Live reads on SiriusXM radio with "girl dads" discussing the initiative

Additionally, the campaign included shopper marketing components for retailers including CVS and Walgreens.

Inspiring Athlete Voices on Pandora

Audio spots featuring emerging female athletes played to our largely ad-supported Pandora audiences. And 3D audio spots created an immersive message from Venus Williams. In addition to these elements, the campaign included sponsored listening to up engagement and reward listeners as well as mobile video and Video Plus products to tell a multiformat story within the Pandora platform.

Personal Stories on SiriusXM

Popular SiriusXM hosts delivered compelling live reads to their audiences on shows like SiriusXM NFL Radio, Mad Dog Radio, and SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio. These “girl dads” gave testimonials about how they would support the initiative with their own families. The campaign also included Dove body confidence vignettes running across SiriusXM sports channels. 

Authenticity and Bonus Content on a Podcast

Dove partnered with podcast School of Greatness to create a bonus episode. Host Lewis Howes is passionate about supporting women in sports, and his show frequently features female athletes. The episode included an exclusive interview with Dove’s campaign ambassador Venus Williams where she discussed her experience overcoming negative thoughts related to body confidence and self-esteem. 

The bonus episode gave Dove 100% SOV within the bonus episode including the pre-, mid-, and post-roll ads. To amplify the episode and drive promotion, Lewis created a robust social strategy to drive additional awareness.

The Results

The Dove #KeepHerConfident audio campaign got attention, sparked conversation, and delivered impact. And with 103M impressions (and counting) across tactics, the brand saw boosts across key metrics like brand affinity, favorability, and purchase intent. The wider, overall campaign had a total positive sentiment of 98%. And it outperformed impression KPIs by 448%.

Just like any successful sports team, all of the campaign’s components came together to score big for the brand and win with fans.

Getting Attention

On audio platforms, the campaign generated millions of impressions with a strong frequency rate, ensuring the message was both heard and retained.

Sparking Conversation

The custom bonus podcast episode and social amplification around it were a resounding success. The episode reached a wide audience, and social content drew strong engagement, with thousands of likes, shares, and thoughtful comments.

Delivering Impact

A third-party brand lift study showed very notable improvement across key brand metrics among listeners exposed to the podcast episode.

Compared to a control group, exposed listeners showed significant increases in brand affinity, favorability, and purchase intent—with results outperforming industry benchmarks.

Winning Awards

Studio Resonate’s powerful work on this successful audio campaign has brought home a number of awards (so far):

• Hermes, Platinum – Audio/Radio Ad Campaign

• American Advertising Awards, Local SF Chapter, Silver – Audio/Radio Advertising Campaign

• The Drum Awards, shortlisted – Creative category

• ThinkLA, Best Audio Campaign

Ready to launch a campaign that resonates with your target audience while scoring big results? Let’s talk.

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