Greenpeace exposes the ugly face of Dove

With its decades-long dedication to body positivity and female empowerment, the last thing you’d expect to associate with beauty brand Dove is causing direct harm to women and young girls.   

Shockingly, this impactful campaign, directed by BAFTA-nominated filmmaker Alice Russell for environmental activism charity Greenpeace, draws attention to the damage the brand and its parent company, Unilever, causes to the environment with its single-use plastic packaging pollution, which is directly affecting the health and wellbeing of women – the people Dove claims to uplift and empower. 

The hard-hitting film is a subversion of the acclaimed 2022 Ogilvy-produced Dove video Toxic Influence. Mirroring the original, it features pairs of mothers and daughters in conversation. They begin by discussing their positive reactions to Dove’s marketing, before the true scale of the brand's plastic waste and its devastating impacts are revealed - bringing with it strong feelings of shock and revulsion. 

Anna Diski, campaigner at Greenpeace UK said: “This powerful film shows the genuine human reaction to the hypocrisy which seeps through Dove and its slick marketing. It’s a reaction which should worry the brand - the women and girls they claim to champion won’t put up with it and want Dove to change."