A fascinating look at how Dove (legally) hacked Shutterstock to change the search results for popular searches for photos depicting women. An interesting take on a brand targeting the advertising industry to more fully embrace an important social issue.
After observing terms like “beautiful woman” and “real woman” mostly yield the same ol’ same, “we collaborated with some of the biggest photographers in the industry and took pictures of strong, independent and original women in non-stereotypical settings,” Mindshare creative director Kenneth Kaadtmann told AdFreak.
“The pictures were uploaded to stock sites and tagged to alter [their] algorithms, giving anyone who searches the site a realistic picture of women in today’s society. Then we encouraged agencies and advertisers to use these images to portray women equally in their ads.”
