Dove takes Media Lion Grand Prix for ‘Refined for the AI Era’
Dove has landed the coveted Grand Prix in the Media Lions category at Cannes for “Refined for the AI Era”, part of its long-running “Dove Real Beauty” campaign.
The work for the Unilever brand was led by Mindshare New York. It also involved Edelman New York, Collectively New York, Pinterest, Saigon Reston and Soko São Paulo.
It aimed to promote “authentic beauty” in the AI era. According to Dove, one in three women feel pressure to alter their appearance to conform to beauty standards depicted online — even when they know images are fake or AI-generated.
As such, AI “poses one of the greatest threats to real beauty in the last 20 years, meaning representation is more important than ever”, the brand argued.
The campaign’s use of Pinterest as a media channel aligned well with its message; Pinterest CEO Bill Ready has staked the business on helping solve the mental health crisis, including by creating inclusive beauty filters, tuning search results to promote diversity and creating “body type AI“, which similarly aims to make more users feel represented on the platform.
Dove’s campaign reached 27m users on the platform and led to a 2.9% increase in brand association and 21.4% higher engagement with women compared with Pinterest benchmarks.
As part of the campaign, Dove recommitted to never use AI to create or distort images of women. It also released a “Real Beauty Prompt Playbook” to advise creators on how to use AI to generate “real beauty” — more authentic-looking images that champion diversity and the subjective nature of beauty.
Jury president and Omnicom Media Group EMEA CEO Dan Clays said: “Dove has embraced the very technology that is distorting the notion of real beauty in today’s media ecosystem and partnered with a platform to not only generate and showcase content for women that elevates a more authentic version of real beauty but also serves as a source of highly impactful media for the brand across multiple channels and in commerce.
“In keeping with the brand story, Dove doesn’t over-claim to have solved the problem across platforms. But in 2025, the Jury felt the work reflected real optimism for how brands can embrace the future of media creativity.”
“Refined for the AI Era” picked up an additional silver gong.
Meanwhile, Dove won another silver for “Code My Crown” and a bronze for “Most Likely To”.
Overall, 66 awards were handed out in the Media category, including 12 golds.
Mercado Libre, which won the Media Grand Prix in 2024, scooped a gold for “Coupon Rain” by Gut São Paulo. The brand picked up another silver and two bronzes.
The UK accounted for two golds in this category. The winners were Skoda “Redditor Edit” by PHD London and Waitrose Christmas ad “Sweet Suspicion” by MG OMD.
In total, the UK picked up eight awards — more than double its total from the year before.
The Waitrose campaign won another silver, while the other winning brands were: Bupa (Momentum Worldwide London), Dove (Edelman London), McDonald’s (OMD UK; two awards) and ITV/Campaign Against Living Miserably (the7stars).