With lines like “Kinda smells like expired hotel shampoo” and “Smells hella bad,” Dove’s decision to advertise real, unfiltered reviews of its hair repair mask breaks beauty industry conventions.
Dove ripped up the rulebook and turned to arguably the most honest platform on the internet: Reddit. Working with agencies David London, AKQA Paris, and WPP Media, the Unilever brand asked Reddit’s anonymous users to review Dove Intensive Repair 10-in-1 Serum Mask—its most-awarded hair mask of 2025—with complete honesty.
Rather than bury the negative feedback, Dove chose to publicize and build an entire campaign around those reviews.
“R/eal reviews” (r/ is Reddit shorthand for a topic-specific forum) broadcasts real voices at scale through guerrilla out-of-home placements across New York, digital OOH, and testimonial-style films in which Redditors read their posts verbatim, their identities masked by Reddit-style cartoons.
Dove also challenged creators and influencers to share their unfiltered experiences in sponsored content.
The brand has long championed more honest advertising. It began using real women’s testimonials as early as 1969 and continues to center real women and their personal stories in its campaigns.
Berengere Loubatier, Dove’s senior global brand vice-president for hair and skin care, said the team aimed to build on that heritage, “but reinvent what a testimonial means today.”
“That meant grounding the campaign in real community voices, not scripted endorsements. Choosing unfiltered feedback from some of the internet’s most honest critics wasn’t the easiest choice, but it was the most authentic one,” Loubatier said.
Genevieve Gransden, executive creative director at David London, added: “The Reddit universe plays by its own rules, so being able to work directly with Redditors and drop the usual scripts and guardrails for a brand as iconic as Dove was incredibly exciting.”
