Since 2004, Dove’s Self-esteem Project has provided body confidence education to over 114 million young people to help them reach their full potential. With children as young as four starting to become aware of how they feel about their body, there is a clear need for more body image interventions that foster a strong foundation in body confidence at an early age. That’s why in 2024, the Dove Self-esteem Project partnered with Moonbug Entertainment, the award-winning entertainment company behind the world’s most popular preschool entertainment brands, to extend its body confidence education tools to address kids as young as four for the first time. The goal of the campaign was to introduce the Dove Self-esteem Project mission to children under four and arm parents with the knowledge and tools needed to build, care for, and protect their child’s self-esteem. The sole campaign KPI was to measurably improve self-esteem in preschool-aged children by driving viewership of the special.
Moonbug created a musical special, Blippi’s Wonderful Talent Show, where Blippi puts on a talent show to showcase his friends’ unique abilities and the amazing things their bodies can do. The two key considerations for the special were 1) focusing lyrics and storylines on what the body can DO, not what it looks like, and 2) showcasing diverse bodies across shape/size, gender, and ethnicity. The special included 9 music videos, which were also distributed as individual videos on YouTube. Dove Self-esteem Project and Moonbug also created social content and a downloadable toolkit to support parents in navigating complex conversations around self-esteem.
To ensure the impact of the content, Dove and Moonbug partnered with the Centre for Appearance Research (CAR), a research center focused on body image. Throughout the production process, Dove and Moonbug collaborated with CAR on the special’s narrative, script, and lyrics. Once it was ready, CAR tested the content with an audience of over 350 children; passing the CAR testing process was a necessary step for the content to move forward. Testing results indicated that the content has a positive effect on kids’ body confidence, giving Dove and Moonbug the green light to go live.
The primary objective of the campaign – to increase self-esteem in preschool-aged children – was validated through the CAR testing, which showed that young children who watched the content felt better about their bodies after watching. Since launch, the video content has reached a significant number of families, receiving a staggering 56M+ organic views and 800K music stream. Additionally, the campaign has received more than 4.7M organic social impressions and 89K social engagement, a further indication that the campaign is resonating with preschool-aged children and their parents.
