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Evolution (Dove)
Encyclopedia
Evolution is an advertising campaign
launched by Unilever
in 2006 as part of its Dove Campaign for Real Beauty
, to promote the newly created Dove Self-Esteem Fund. The centre of the Unilever campaign is a 75-second spot produced by Ogilvy & Mather
in Toronto
, Canada
. The piece was first displayed online on 6 October 2006, and was later broadcast as a television and cinema spot in the Netherlands
and the Middle East
. The ad was created from the budget left over from the earlier Daughters campaign, and was intended to be the first in a series of such online-focused spots by the company. Later pieces include Onslaught
and Amy. Evolution was directed by Canadian director Yael Staav and Tim Piper
, with sound design handled by the Vapor Music Group, and post-production
by SoHo.
The advert was a critical, popular, and financial success. It won a number of awards in the advertising industry, including two Cannes Lions
Grand Prix awards and an Epica D'Or
. It has been discussed in many mainstream television programmes and print publications, and the exposure generated by the spot has been estimated to be worth over $150M. Evolution has also spawned numerous unofficial alternate versions, including a title sequence
to a BBC
sketch show and the short parody Slob Evolution, which has gone on to itself be nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award
.
's "Passage D
", a drum and bass
piece with piano
accompaniment, are heard. The short credits sequence
provides the title of the film and credit to Dove. The camera then switches to a time lapse
sequence, showing makeup artist Diana Carreiro making Betts up and adjusting her hair, transforming her into a "strikingly beautiful billboard model
." When the final physical adjustments of Betts's appearance have been made, the team members all move off-camera and a series of camera flashes begins as the photographer takes shots of Betts in various poses.
One shot is selected from the batch and moved into a generic image editing software interface, where a series of "Photoshopping" adjustments are made to alter Betts's appearance even further, including, but not limited to: lengthening her neck, adjusting the curve of her shoulders, altering her hair and skin, and enlarging her eyes and mouth. The final image of Betts, now rendered almost unrecognizable, is then transferred to a billboard
advertisement for the fictional "Easel" (or "Fasel") brand of foundation makeup, and the video fades to the statement, "No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted." The film ends with an invitation to take part in "Dove Real Beauty Workshops", the logo for the Dove Self-Esteem Fund, and, in some versions, the website address of Unilever-Dove's Campaign For Real Beauty
, for which the film was produced.
s, hair-care
and skin-care products. The first stage of the campaign centred around a series of billboard
advertisements, initially put up in the United Kingdom
, and later worldwide. The spots showcased photographs of regular women (in place of professional models), taken by noted portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz
. The ads invited passers-by to vote on whether a particular model was, for example, "Fat or Fab" or "Wrinkled or Wonderful", with the results of the votes dynamically updated and displayed on the billboard itself. Accompanying the billboard advertisements was the publication of the "Dove Report", a corporate study which Unilever intended to "[create] a new definition of beauty [which] will free women from self-doubt and encourage them to embrace their real beauty."
The series received significant media coverage from talk show
s, women's magazines, and mainstream news broadcasts and publications, generating media exposure which Unilever has estimated to be worth more than 30 times the paid-for media space. Following this success, the campaign expanded into other media, with a series of television spots (Flip Your Wigs and the Pro-Age series, among others) and print advertisements ("Tested on Real Curves"), culminating in the 2006 Little Girls global campaign, which featured regional versions of the same advertisement in both print and screen, for which Unilever purchased a 30-second spot in the commercial break during Super Bowl XL
at an estimated cost of US$2.5M.
In 2006, Ogilvy & Mather were seeking to extend the campaign further, by creating one or more viral video
s to host on the Campaign for Real Beauty website. The first of these, Daughters, was an interview-style piece intended to show how mothers and daughters related to issues surrounding the modern perception of beauty and the beauty industry. It was during the production of Daughters that a series of short films entitled "Beauty Crackdown", of which Evolution was part, was pitched to Unilever as an "activation idea." The concept was one that art director
Tim Piper, who proposed to create Evolution with the budget left over from Daughters (C$135,000), pushed. It was originally intended to get people to the Campaign for Real Beauty website to see Daughters, and to participate in the workshops featured on the site.
), fashion photographers Tiko Poulakakis and Gabor Jurina, makeup artist Diana Carreiro, art director Tim Piper, and Piper's then-girlfriend, Stephanie Betts as the model. Betts, a cartoonist and producer of Canadian animated television programming such as Producing Parker
, was chosen as the model for Evolution in part because Piper was first inspired to write the piece after seeing the amount of time his girlfriend spent applying make-up, and he felt that she would be an ideal "representation of the norm", highlighting the extreme changes that models undergo in the fashion industry. She was originally dubious about taking on the role, but later stated that she was proud that she joined the campaign.
The actual production itself took place over the course of a single day, and over two-and-a-half hours of footage was taken for the make-up portion of the film. This was eventually condensed to 23 seconds in the final version. The stage was dressed in a manner identical to that of modern fashion shoots, with the lighting and camera being positioned to remove any shadows from Betts's face to aid in the post-production retouching. Sound design took three weeks, and was divided into two sections. Fifteen hours were spent creating several mixes
of "Passage D"
, each tested and discarded before the version used in the final film was settled upon. A further nine hours were spent adding in the various background noises to the piece, including sped-up human voices, a starter pistol and galloping racehorses
.
Post-production at SoHo was originally planned to take approximately three days, but it was extended to two weeks. Gabor Jurina, the photographer responsible for the digital retouching of the actual photographs taken of Betts during the shoot, supplied the post-production team with 118 digital stills of the intermediate stages of the transformation from the "real" photograph of the made-up Betts to the final image shown on the billboard. These were re-cut and assembled to create the functions shown in the "Photoshopping" sequence, such as stretching Betts's neck and adjusting the size of certain of her facial features. Other post-production work included stabilising Betts's head in the center of the shot during the make-up sequence, covering certain continuity errors, creating and compositing the billboard advertisement, and constructing a false image-editing interface.
, and was uploaded by art director Tim Piper to video sharing website YouTube
shortly after. While it has remained a largely internet-based campaign, Evolution has appeared as a television commercial in the Netherlands and the Middle East, and in the U.S. inside commercial breaks in The Hills.
Once uploaded, the advert was viewed over 40,000 times in its first day, 1,700,000 times within a month of its upload, and 12,000,000 times within its first year. Even without having appeared offline, the advert was discussed by a number of mainstream television programmes, including Good Morning America
, The Ellen DeGeneres Show
, and The View, and news networks such as CNN
, NBC
, and ABC News
, with the overwhelming majority coming out in support of the campaign's message. Spaces at the mother and daughter workshops sold out almost immediately, and the total exposure generated through the $50,000 piece was estimated by Ogilvy & Mather in October 2006 as being worth around $150M. Comparisons have often been drawn up between the campaign and Dove's earlier purchase of a 30-second spot for Little Girls during the Super Bowl XL. The Super Bowl spot cost an estimated $2.5M, reached an audience of 500 million, and generated only one third of the boost in traffic to the Campaign for Real Beauty website of Evolution. The spot was also credited for its part in producing double-figure growth in sales of Dove product, and Unilever reported that its overall sales in the period following the release of Evolution rose by 5.8%, up from 3.9% the previous year.
Evolution was particularly popular with critics within the advertising industry, and has garnered a number of awards since its debut in October 2006. It was the favourite in the run up to the Cannes Lions
to win the festival's Grand Prix in the Cyber category, generally considered one of the most prestigious awards in the industry. Ultimately, the prize went to three entries: Nike+, advertising the Nike
brand, Heidies 15 MB
of Fame, promoting fashion company Diesel S.p.A.'s website and products, and Evolution. Evolution also went on to win the Grand Prix in the Film category, beating Pretty from Nike, Inc., Paint for Sony's BRAVIA
line of high-definition television
sets, and The Power of Wind for the Wind Energy Initiative. The victory attracted a certain amount of controversy, as the jury switched Evolution from the "Fundraising & Appeals" category, whose entries are ineligible to win the Grand Prix, to the "Corporate Image" category at the last minute. Chairman of the jury Bob Scarpelli said of the decision "We moved it into another category because we felt that strongly about it. We were not trying to break rules or set precedents, we just went with our hearts and minds, and asked the festival if we could move it." As a result of the win, Evolution became the first entry in the festival's history to take home Grand Prix awards from two categories and the first web-based advertisement to win in the Film category (followed in 2009 by Philips
' Carousel
)
The piece went on to win a number of other awards, including a silver Clio Award (in the Toiletries/Pharmaceuticals category), the Film Grand Prix and two Gold prizes at the London International Awards, an Epica D'Or and Gold Prize in the Interactive category of the Epica Awards
, among others.
The popularity of Evolution and its presence on many video-sharing websites led inevitably to a large number of alternate versions and parodies being uploaded by the public. In under six months, parodies on YouTube alone received over 5 million hits between them, Of these, by far the most successful was a professionally-made piece entitled Slob Evolution.
Slob Evolution is an Emmy Award
-nominated short film created as a parody
of the original Evolution spot in late 2006. The piece was directed by Simon Willows, known for his work on the Volvic
mineral water
television and cinema commercials, and was produced by Claire Jones with the production company Blink Productions. Post-production work was done by Framestore CFC
.
In Slob Evolution, the role of the model is taken by a teenage boy who, instead of having make-up applied in the time-lapse sequence, is given fast food
, alcoholic beverage
s, cigarette
s, and a Blowjob, transforming over the course of thirty seconds into an overweight middle-aged slob. Further adjustments are made in a similar image-editing interface to that used in Evolution,. The subject's neck is shortened, his features made more asymmetric, and a tattoo is added. The image is transferred to a billboard advertisement for the fictional "Lardo" brand of "man cream", and the piece ends with a fade to the statement, "Thank God our perception of reality is distorted. No one wants to look at ugly people."
The parody was uploaded to video-sharing website YouTube on December 4, 2006 and was promoted only through a seeding of 30 e-mail
s. Within its first month, Slob Evolution received over 278,000 hits
. It went on to be nominated for a number of prestigious awards, including the "Comedy: Short Form" and "Viral" categories of the 2007 Webby Awards
, and in the "Outstanding Broadband Comedy" category of the 2007 Daytime Emmy Awards. The popular and critical attention that Blink Productions received for Slob Evolution led to Tiger Aspect, the production company behind the 2007 BBC
comedy sketch show Ruddy Hell! It's Harry and Paul
, contacting the production company to produce an introduction to the show in a similar vein.
The title sequence to Ruddy Hell! It's Harry and Paul begins with a shot of Morwenna Banks
and Laura Solon
. The familiar time-lapse sequence shows the pair being given several pints of lager, cigarettes, and fast food. Their hair is cut and their make-up removed as they slowly morph into Harry Enfield
and Paul Whitehouse
, the joint hosts of Ruddy Hell! It's Harry And Paul. After brassiere
s are removed from the pair's shirts, the camera zooms out to show a billboard advertisement similar to that in Slob Evolution, with the show's title displayed underneath.
documentary, which includes interviews with creative directors Janet Kestin and Tim Piper, photographer Gabor Jurina, post-production director Paul Gowan, digital artists Kevin Gibson and Terry Rose, and sound designer Andrew Harris
, who discuss the various stages of the post-production process behind the creation of the spot. The making-of also includes a shot of Evolutions storyboard
and a short segment of behind-the-scenes footage from the shoot itself, showing Stephanie Betts before and after the make-up process.
After the debut of Evolution, Dove quickly ordered several follow-up online advertisements, the first two of which (Onslaught and Amy) appeared online in October 2007. These were also written and directed by Tim Piper. The pair are predicted to prove at least as popular as Evolution. Other companies have attempted to use the same formula, with mixed results. Among the more-commented on campaigns is Beauty is..., launched by Nivea
in 2007 and comprising television, print, and online segments which push the same message as the Dove campaign.
Advertising campaign
An advertising campaign is a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme which make up an integrated marketing communication...
launched by Unilever
Unilever
Unilever is a British-Dutch multinational corporation that owns many of the world's consumer product brands in foods, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products....
in 2006 as part of its Dove Campaign for Real Beauty
Dove Campaign for Real Beauty
The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is a worldwide marketing campaign launched in 2004 that includes advertisements, video, workshops, sleepover events and even the publication of a book and the production of a play...
, to promote the newly created Dove Self-Esteem Fund. The centre of the Unilever campaign is a 75-second spot produced by Ogilvy & Mather
Ogilvy & Mather
Ogilvy & Mather is an international advertising, marketing and public relations agency based in Manhattan and owned by the WPP Group. The company operates 497 offices in 125 countries with approximately 16,000 employees.-History:...
in Toronto
Toronto
Toronto is the provincial capital of Ontario and the largest city in Canada. It is located in Southern Ontario on the northwestern shore of Lake Ontario. A relatively modern city, Toronto's history dates back to the late-18th century, when its land was first purchased by the British monarchy from...
, Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
. The piece was first displayed online on 6 October 2006, and was later broadcast as a television and cinema spot in the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...
and the Middle East
Middle East
The Middle East is a region that encompasses Western Asia and Northern Africa. It is often used as a synonym for Near East, in opposition to Far East...
. The ad was created from the budget left over from the earlier Daughters campaign, and was intended to be the first in a series of such online-focused spots by the company. Later pieces include Onslaught
Onslaught (Dove)
Onslaught is an online advertising campaign created by Unilever in 2007 to promote the Dove Self-Esteem Fund. It is the third such piece to be released, following Daughters and Evolution. As with the previous spots, the 80-second spot was managed by advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather and was...
and Amy. Evolution was directed by Canadian director Yael Staav and Tim Piper
Tim Piper
Tim Piper is a writer and director for television commercials and branded content. Piper wrote and co-directed the television commercial "Dove Evolution", which won the first Unilever Grand Prix award for advertising....
, with sound design handled by the Vapor Music Group, and post-production
Post-production
Post-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...
by SoHo.
The advert was a critical, popular, and financial success. It won a number of awards in the advertising industry, including two Cannes Lions
Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival
The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is a global event for those working in advertising and related fields. The seven-day festival, incorporating the awarding of the Lions awards, is held yearly at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes, France...
Grand Prix awards and an Epica D'Or
Epica Awards
The Epica Awards aim to encourage the highest standards of creativity and help agencies, film production companies, media consultancies and photographers to develop their reputations across Europe and the EMEA region. The awards are judged by the advertising trade press; 34 magazines from 27...
. It has been discussed in many mainstream television programmes and print publications, and the exposure generated by the spot has been estimated to be worth over $150M. Evolution has also spawned numerous unofficial alternate versions, including a title sequence
Title sequence
A Title Sequence is the method by which cinematic films or television programs present their title, key production and cast members, or both, utilizing conceptual visuals and sound...
to a BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
sketch show and the short parody Slob Evolution, which has gone on to itself be nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award
Daytime Emmy Award
The Daytime Emmy Awards are awards presented by the New York-based National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences and the Los Angeles-based Academy of Television Arts & Sciences in recognition of excellence in American daytime television programming...
.
Sequence
The film opens with a "pretty, but ordinary girl" (cartoonist and television producer Stephanie Betts) entering and sitting down in a studio. Two harsh lights are switched on and the first bars of The FlashbulbBenn Jordan
Benn Lee Jordan is an American modern jazz and electronica musician operating under many pseudonyms. Since 1999 his most widely distributed and eclectic music has been released under the name of The Flashbulb...
's "Passage D
Kirlian Selections
Kirlian Selections is the sixth full-length album by The Flashbulb , released in April 2005.Jordan had strongly considered not releasing the material at all, considering it more of a testament to what he was capable of achieving rather than as a piece to be openly acquired by the public...
", a drum and bass
Drum and bass
Drum and bass is a type of electronic music which emerged in the late 1980s. The genre is characterized by fast breakbeats , with heavy bass and sub-bass lines...
piece with piano
Piano
The piano is a musical instrument played by means of a keyboard. It is one of the most popular instruments in the world. Widely used in classical and jazz music for solo performances, ensemble use, chamber music and accompaniment, the piano is also very popular as an aid to composing and rehearsal...
accompaniment, are heard. The short credits sequence
Opening credits
In a motion picture, television program, or video game, the opening credits are shown at the very beginning and list the most important members of the production. They are now usually shown as text superimposed on a blank screen or static pictures, or sometimes on top of action in the show. There...
provides the title of the film and credit to Dove. The camera then switches to a time lapse
Time Lapse
Time Lapse is the first live album by guitarist Steve Hackett. The album is drawn from live performances at the Savoy Theater in New York City and at Central TV Studios in Nottingham.-Track listing:...
sequence, showing makeup artist Diana Carreiro making Betts up and adjusting her hair, transforming her into a "strikingly beautiful billboard model
Model (person)
A model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed to display, advertise and promote commercial products or to serve as a subject of works of art....
." When the final physical adjustments of Betts's appearance have been made, the team members all move off-camera and a series of camera flashes begins as the photographer takes shots of Betts in various poses.
One shot is selected from the batch and moved into a generic image editing software interface, where a series of "Photoshopping" adjustments are made to alter Betts's appearance even further, including, but not limited to: lengthening her neck, adjusting the curve of her shoulders, altering her hair and skin, and enlarging her eyes and mouth. The final image of Betts, now rendered almost unrecognizable, is then transferred to a billboard
Billboard (advertising)
A billboard is a large outdoor advertising structure , typically found in high traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertisements to passing pedestrians and drivers...
advertisement for the fictional "Easel" (or "Fasel") brand of foundation makeup, and the video fades to the statement, "No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted." The film ends with an invitation to take part in "Dove Real Beauty Workshops", the logo for the Dove Self-Esteem Fund, and, in some versions, the website address of Unilever-Dove's Campaign For Real Beauty
Dove Campaign for Real Beauty
The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is a worldwide marketing campaign launched in 2004 that includes advertisements, video, workshops, sleepover events and even the publication of a book and the production of a play...
, for which the film was produced.
Background
The Dove Campaign For Real Beauty was launched by Unilever in 2003, to coincide with the expansion of the Dove brand from soaps and other cleansing solutions to health and beauty products in general, including deodourants, shower gelShower gel
Shower gel or shower cream is the general term for a substance similar to liquid soap, which is used for cleaning yourself during a shower. Most commercial shower gels do not contain any saponified oil however, instead being products of petroleum...
s, hair-care
Hair care
Hair care is an overall term for parts of hygiene and cosmetology involving the hair on the human head. Hair care will differ according to one's hair type and according to various processes that can be applied to hair...
and skin-care products. The first stage of the campaign centred around a series of billboard
Billboard (advertising)
A billboard is a large outdoor advertising structure , typically found in high traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertisements to passing pedestrians and drivers...
advertisements, initially put up in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, and later worldwide. The spots showcased photographs of regular women (in place of professional models), taken by noted portrait photographer Annie Leibovitz
Annie Leibovitz
Anna-Lou "Annie" Leibovitz is an American portrait photographer.-Early life and education:Born in Waterbury, Connecticut, Leibovitz is the third of six children. She is a third-generation American whose great-grandparents were Jewish immigrants, from Central and Eastern Europe. Her father's...
. The ads invited passers-by to vote on whether a particular model was, for example, "Fat or Fab" or "Wrinkled or Wonderful", with the results of the votes dynamically updated and displayed on the billboard itself. Accompanying the billboard advertisements was the publication of the "Dove Report", a corporate study which Unilever intended to "[create] a new definition of beauty [which] will free women from self-doubt and encourage them to embrace their real beauty."
The series received significant media coverage from talk show
Talk show
A talk show or chat show is a television program or radio program where one person discuss various topics put forth by a talk show host....
s, women's magazines, and mainstream news broadcasts and publications, generating media exposure which Unilever has estimated to be worth more than 30 times the paid-for media space. Following this success, the campaign expanded into other media, with a series of television spots (Flip Your Wigs and the Pro-Age series, among others) and print advertisements ("Tested on Real Curves"), culminating in the 2006 Little Girls global campaign, which featured regional versions of the same advertisement in both print and screen, for which Unilever purchased a 30-second spot in the commercial break during Super Bowl XL
Super Bowl XL
Super Bowl XL was an American football game pitting the American Football Conference champion Pittsburgh Steelers against the National Football Conference champion Seattle Seahawks to decide the National Football League champion for the 2005 season...
at an estimated cost of US$2.5M.
In 2006, Ogilvy & Mather were seeking to extend the campaign further, by creating one or more viral video
Viral video
A viral video is one that becomes popular through the process of Internet sharing, typically through video sharing websites, social media and email...
s to host on the Campaign for Real Beauty website. The first of these, Daughters, was an interview-style piece intended to show how mothers and daughters related to issues surrounding the modern perception of beauty and the beauty industry. It was during the production of Daughters that a series of short films entitled "Beauty Crackdown", of which Evolution was part, was pitched to Unilever as an "activation idea." The concept was one that art director
Art director
The art director is a person who supervise the creative process of a design.The term 'art director' is a blanket title for a variety of similar job functions in advertising, publishing, film and television, the Internet, and video games....
Tim Piper, who proposed to create Evolution with the budget left over from Daughters (C$135,000), pushed. It was originally intended to get people to the Campaign for Real Beauty website to see Daughters, and to participate in the workshops featured on the site.
Production
The team brought together for the ad included director Yael Staav, the first female director to win a Cannes Lion (for Hugging, a campaign for the ALS Society of CanadaAmyotrophic lateral sclerosis
Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis , also referred to as Lou Gehrig's disease, is a form of motor neuron disease caused by the degeneration of upper and lower neurons, located in the ventral horn of the spinal cord and the cortical neurons that provide their efferent input...
), fashion photographers Tiko Poulakakis and Gabor Jurina, makeup artist Diana Carreiro, art director Tim Piper, and Piper's then-girlfriend, Stephanie Betts as the model. Betts, a cartoonist and producer of Canadian animated television programming such as Producing Parker
Producing Parker
Producing Parker is a Canadian animated television sitcom that debuted May 4, 2009 on TVtropolis. Episodes began airing on Global in Fall 2009....
, was chosen as the model for Evolution in part because Piper was first inspired to write the piece after seeing the amount of time his girlfriend spent applying make-up, and he felt that she would be an ideal "representation of the norm", highlighting the extreme changes that models undergo in the fashion industry. She was originally dubious about taking on the role, but later stated that she was proud that she joined the campaign.
The actual production itself took place over the course of a single day, and over two-and-a-half hours of footage was taken for the make-up portion of the film. This was eventually condensed to 23 seconds in the final version. The stage was dressed in a manner identical to that of modern fashion shoots, with the lighting and camera being positioned to remove any shadows from Betts's face to aid in the post-production retouching. Sound design took three weeks, and was divided into two sections. Fifteen hours were spent creating several mixes
Remix
A remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version. This term is also used for any alterations of media other than song ....
of "Passage D"
Kirlian Selections
Kirlian Selections is the sixth full-length album by The Flashbulb , released in April 2005.Jordan had strongly considered not releasing the material at all, considering it more of a testament to what he was capable of achieving rather than as a piece to be openly acquired by the public...
, each tested and discarded before the version used in the final film was settled upon. A further nine hours were spent adding in the various background noises to the piece, including sped-up human voices, a starter pistol and galloping racehorses
Horse racing
Horse racing is an equestrian sport that has a long history. Archaeological records indicate that horse racing occurred in ancient Babylon, Syria, and Egypt. Both chariot and mounted horse racing were events in the ancient Greek Olympics by 648 BC...
.
Post-production at SoHo was originally planned to take approximately three days, but it was extended to two weeks. Gabor Jurina, the photographer responsible for the digital retouching of the actual photographs taken of Betts during the shoot, supplied the post-production team with 118 digital stills of the intermediate stages of the transformation from the "real" photograph of the made-up Betts to the final image shown on the billboard. These were re-cut and assembled to create the functions shown in the "Photoshopping" sequence, such as stretching Betts's neck and adjusting the size of certain of her facial features. Other post-production work included stabilising Betts's head in the center of the shot during the make-up sequence, covering certain continuity errors, creating and compositing the billboard advertisement, and constructing a false image-editing interface.
Release and reception
Evolution was incorporated into the Canadian Campaign for Real Beauty website on 6 October 2006 in order to coincide with the start of the Los Angeles Fashion WeekLos Angeles Fashion Week
Los Angeles Fashion Week takes place each March and October in locations throughout the Los Angeles area.-History:...
, and was uploaded by art director Tim Piper to video sharing website YouTube
YouTube
YouTube is a video-sharing website, created by three former PayPal employees in February 2005, on which users can upload, view and share videos....
shortly after. While it has remained a largely internet-based campaign, Evolution has appeared as a television commercial in the Netherlands and the Middle East, and in the U.S. inside commercial breaks in The Hills.
Once uploaded, the advert was viewed over 40,000 times in its first day, 1,700,000 times within a month of its upload, and 12,000,000 times within its first year. Even without having appeared offline, the advert was discussed by a number of mainstream television programmes, including Good Morning America
Good Morning America
Good Morning America is an American morning news and talk show that is broadcast on the ABC television network; it debuted on November 3, 1975. The weekday program airs for two hours; a third hour aired between 2007 and 2008 exclusively on ABC News Now...
, The Ellen DeGeneres Show
The Ellen DeGeneres Show
The Ellen DeGeneres Show, often shortened to Ellen, is an American television talk show hosted by comedian/actress Ellen DeGeneres. Debuting on September 8, 2003, it is produced by Telepictures and airs in syndication, including stations owned by NBC Universal. For its first five seasons, the show...
, and The View, and news networks such as CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
, NBC
NBC
The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...
, and ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...
, with the overwhelming majority coming out in support of the campaign's message. Spaces at the mother and daughter workshops sold out almost immediately, and the total exposure generated through the $50,000 piece was estimated by Ogilvy & Mather in October 2006 as being worth around $150M. Comparisons have often been drawn up between the campaign and Dove's earlier purchase of a 30-second spot for Little Girls during the Super Bowl XL. The Super Bowl spot cost an estimated $2.5M, reached an audience of 500 million, and generated only one third of the boost in traffic to the Campaign for Real Beauty website of Evolution. The spot was also credited for its part in producing double-figure growth in sales of Dove product, and Unilever reported that its overall sales in the period following the release of Evolution rose by 5.8%, up from 3.9% the previous year.
Evolution was particularly popular with critics within the advertising industry, and has garnered a number of awards since its debut in October 2006. It was the favourite in the run up to the Cannes Lions
Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival
The Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity is a global event for those working in advertising and related fields. The seven-day festival, incorporating the awarding of the Lions awards, is held yearly at the Palais des Festivals et des Congrès in Cannes, France...
to win the festival's Grand Prix in the Cyber category, generally considered one of the most prestigious awards in the industry. Ultimately, the prize went to three entries: Nike+, advertising the Nike
Nike, Inc.
Nike, Inc. is a major publicly traded sportswear and equipment supplier based in the United States. The company is headquartered near Beaverton, Oregon, which is part of the Portland metropolitan area...
brand, Heidies 15 MB
Megabyte
The megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...
of Fame, promoting fashion company Diesel S.p.A.'s website and products, and Evolution. Evolution also went on to win the Grand Prix in the Film category, beating Pretty from Nike, Inc., Paint for Sony's BRAVIA
BRAVIA
BRAVIA is a Sony brand used to market its high-definition LCD televisions, projection TVs and front projectors and for the PlayStation 3 , along with its home cinema range under the sub-brand BRAVIA Theatre. The BRAVIA name is an acronym of "Best Resolution Audio Visual Integrated Architecture"...
line of high-definition television
High-definition television
High-definition television is video that has resolution substantially higher than that of traditional television systems . HDTV has one or two million pixels per frame, roughly five times that of SD...
sets, and The Power of Wind for the Wind Energy Initiative. The victory attracted a certain amount of controversy, as the jury switched Evolution from the "Fundraising & Appeals" category, whose entries are ineligible to win the Grand Prix, to the "Corporate Image" category at the last minute. Chairman of the jury Bob Scarpelli said of the decision "We moved it into another category because we felt that strongly about it. We were not trying to break rules or set precedents, we just went with our hearts and minds, and asked the festival if we could move it." As a result of the win, Evolution became the first entry in the festival's history to take home Grand Prix awards from two categories and the first web-based advertisement to win in the Film category (followed in 2009 by Philips
Philips
Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. , more commonly known as Philips, is a multinational Dutch electronics company....
' Carousel
Carousel (advert)
Carousel is an online advertisement launched in April 2009 by Philips to promote Philips Cinema 21:9 LCD televisions. The 139-second piece is a continuous tracking shot of a frozen moment after an armoured van heist gone wrong, with robbers dressed in clown masks holding a pitched battle with...
)
The piece went on to win a number of other awards, including a silver Clio Award (in the Toiletries/Pharmaceuticals category), the Film Grand Prix and two Gold prizes at the London International Awards, an Epica D'Or and Gold Prize in the Interactive category of the Epica Awards
Epica Awards
The Epica Awards aim to encourage the highest standards of creativity and help agencies, film production companies, media consultancies and photographers to develop their reputations across Europe and the EMEA region. The awards are judged by the advertising trade press; 34 magazines from 27...
, among others.
Slob Evolution
Slob Evolution is an Emmy Award
Emmy Award
An Emmy Award, often referred to simply as the Emmy, is a television production award, similar in nature to the Peabody Awards but more focused on entertainment, and is considered the television equivalent to the Academy Awards and the Grammy Awards .A majority of Emmys are presented in various...
-nominated short film created as a parody
Parody
A parody , in current usage, is an imitative work created to mock, comment on, or trivialise an original work, its subject, author, style, or some other target, by means of humorous, satiric or ironic imitation...
of the original Evolution spot in late 2006. The piece was directed by Simon Willows, known for his work on the Volvic
Volvic (mineral water)
Volvic is a brand of mineral water. Its source lies just to the north of the Puy de Dôme. The water's distinctive mineral content is due to the nearby volcano which last erupted in 5760 BC....
mineral water
Mineral water
Mineral water is water containing minerals or other dissolved substances that alter its taste or give it therapeutic value, generally obtained from a naturally occurring mineral spring or source. Dissolved substances in the water may include various salts and sulfur compounds...
television and cinema commercials, and was produced by Claire Jones with the production company Blink Productions. Post-production work was done by Framestore CFC
Framestore CFC
Framestore is a British Oscar-winning visual effects company based near Oxford Street in London. Formed in 1986, it acquired the Computer Film Company in 1997. The company works across several different areas of the media: feature films, commercials, music videos, feature animation and digital.The...
.
In Slob Evolution, the role of the model is taken by a teenage boy who, instead of having make-up applied in the time-lapse sequence, is given fast food
Fast food
Fast food is the term given to food that can be prepared and served very quickly. While any meal with low preparation time can be considered to be fast food, typically the term refers to food sold in a restaurant or store with preheated or precooked ingredients, and served to the customer in a...
, alcoholic beverage
Alcoholic beverage
An alcoholic beverage is a drink containing ethanol, commonly known as alcohol. Alcoholic beverages are divided into three general classes: beers, wines, and spirits. They are legally consumed in most countries, and over 100 countries have laws regulating their production, sale, and consumption...
s, cigarette
Cigarette
A cigarette is a small roll of finely cut tobacco leaves wrapped in a cylinder of thin paper for smoking. The cigarette is ignited at one end and allowed to smoulder; its smoke is inhaled from the other end, which is held in or to the mouth and in some cases a cigarette holder may be used as well...
s, and a Blowjob, transforming over the course of thirty seconds into an overweight middle-aged slob. Further adjustments are made in a similar image-editing interface to that used in Evolution,. The subject's neck is shortened, his features made more asymmetric, and a tattoo is added. The image is transferred to a billboard advertisement for the fictional "Lardo" brand of "man cream", and the piece ends with a fade to the statement, "Thank God our perception of reality is distorted. No one wants to look at ugly people."
The parody was uploaded to video-sharing website YouTube on December 4, 2006 and was promoted only through a seeding of 30 e-mail
E-mail
Electronic mail, commonly known as email or e-mail, is a method of exchanging digital messages from an author to one or more recipients. Modern email operates across the Internet or other computer networks. Some early email systems required that the author and the recipient both be online at the...
s. Within its first month, Slob Evolution received over 278,000 hits
Hit (internet)
A hit is a request to a web server for a file . When a web page is uploaded from a server the number of "hits" or "page hits" is equal to the number of files requested. Therefore, one page load does not always equal one hit because often pages are made up of other images and other files which stack...
. It went on to be nominated for a number of prestigious awards, including the "Comedy: Short Form" and "Viral" categories of the 2007 Webby Awards
Webby Awards
A Webby Award is an international award presented annually by The International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences for excellence on the Internet with categories in websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile....
, and in the "Outstanding Broadband Comedy" category of the 2007 Daytime Emmy Awards. The popular and critical attention that Blink Productions received for Slob Evolution led to Tiger Aspect, the production company behind the 2007 BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
comedy sketch show Ruddy Hell! It's Harry and Paul
Ruddy Hell! It's Harry and Paul
Harry & Paul is a BAFTA Award-winning British sketch comedy show starring Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse. It was first broadcast on BBC One on 13 April 2007...
, contacting the production company to produce an introduction to the show in a similar vein.
Morwenna Banks
Morwenna Banks is a British comedy actress, writer and producer.Banks is perhaps best known in the UK as a cast member of the British Channel 4 comedy series Absolutely, where her best-known character was a schoolgirl who sat on the edge of a desk.She appeared as the Keeper of the Rules in the...
and Laura Solon
Laura Solon
Laura Solon is an English comedian, actor, writer, and winner of the 2005 Perrier Comedy Award, only the second woman to win as a solo performer .-Background:...
. The familiar time-lapse sequence shows the pair being given several pints of lager, cigarettes, and fast food. Their hair is cut and their make-up removed as they slowly morph into Harry Enfield
Harry Enfield
Henry Richard "Harry" Enfield is a BAFTA-winning English comedian, actor, writer and director.-Early life:...
and Paul Whitehouse
Paul Whitehouse
Paul Whitehouse is a Welsh actor, writer and comedian. He became known for his work with Harry Enfield and as one of the stars of the popular BBC sketch show, The Fast Show. In a 2005 poll to find The Comedian's Comedian, he was in the top 50 comedy acts voted for by comedians and comedy insiders...
, the joint hosts of Ruddy Hell! It's Harry And Paul. After brassiere
Brassiere
A brassiere is an undergarment that covers, supports, and elevates the breasts. Since the late 19th century, it has replaced the corset as the most widely accepted method for supporting breasts....
s are removed from the pair's shirts, the camera zooms out to show a billboard advertisement similar to that in Slob Evolution, with the show's title displayed underneath.
Other works
Shortly after releasing Evolution online, post-production company SoHo uploaded a five-minute making-ofMaking-of
In cinema, a making-of, also known as behind-the-scenes, is a documentary film that features the production of a film or television program...
documentary, which includes interviews with creative directors Janet Kestin and Tim Piper, photographer Gabor Jurina, post-production director Paul Gowan, digital artists Kevin Gibson and Terry Rose, and sound designer Andrew Harris
Andrew Harris (composer)
Andrew Harris is a sound designer, musician, and composer, based out of Vancouver, Canada. He is best known for his music remix and sound design on the Award Winning Ogilvy and Mather commercial, Evolution...
, who discuss the various stages of the post-production process behind the creation of the spot. The making-of also includes a shot of Evolutions storyboard
Storyboard
Storyboards are graphic organizers in the form of illustrations or images displayed in sequence for the purpose of pre-visualizing a motion picture, animation, motion graphic or interactive media sequence....
and a short segment of behind-the-scenes footage from the shoot itself, showing Stephanie Betts before and after the make-up process.
After the debut of Evolution, Dove quickly ordered several follow-up online advertisements, the first two of which (Onslaught and Amy) appeared online in October 2007. These were also written and directed by Tim Piper. The pair are predicted to prove at least as popular as Evolution. Other companies have attempted to use the same formula, with mixed results. Among the more-commented on campaigns is Beauty is..., launched by Nivea
Nivea
Nivea is a global skin- and body-care brand that is owned by the German company Beiersdorf. The company was founded on March 28 1882 by pharmacist Carl Paul Beiersdorf. In 1900, the new owner Oskar Troplowitz developed a water-in-oil emulsion as a skin cream with Eucerit, the first stable emulsion...
in 2007 and comprising television, print, and online segments which push the same message as the Dove campaign.