Jungle Communications

There’s something brands don’t usually like very much: losing control of the message.

We review every word of a campaign. We choose the images. We fine-tune the copy. We approve the tone. We try to anticipate how the audience will react.

Dove did practically the opposite.

The brand decided to ask Reddit users to try one of its products and committed to publishing the first 50 authorized reviews, regardless of whether they were positive or negative.

Without selecting only the best ones. Without turning them into perfect advertising testimonials.

And that was precisely the campaign.

 

1. From Reddit conversations to an advertising campaign

The idea emerged after the relaunch of Dove’s hair care range and its Intensive Repair 10-in-1 Serum Mask.

The brand noticed that organic conversations were already taking place on Reddit, with people talking about damaged hair, looking for recommendations and sharing opinions about different products. Some were positive. Others, not so much.

Instead of trying to steer that conversation, Dove decided to use it.

At the end of 2025, it put out a call to Reddit users to try the mask and share their opinions. The promise was simple and fairly unusual for a major brand: it would publish the first reviews whose authors gave permission for them to be used, regardless of what they said.

Those opinions later became “Dove r/eal reviews”, a campaign rolled out across different channels and physical activations.

The advertising was no longer simply saying, “our product is good.”

It was saying something much more interesting:

This is what people are saying about our product. Read it and decide for yourself.

 

2. Authenticity works when it involves real risk

Talking about authenticity in marketing is easy.

Putting it into practice is much more complicated.

Many campaigns that promise to show “real opinions” are still carefully curated by the brand itself. We choose the best testimonials, the highest ratings and the phrases that best fit the message we want to convey.

Dove introduced a different element: partially giving up that control.

Dove’s US lead herself acknowledged that there was a risk involved. Reddit is hardly a platform where brands can assume they will control the conversation. But the company decided to embrace that characteristic rather than fight against it.

And this raises an interesting question.

If a brand claims to trust its product, how willing is it to let its customers speak for it?

In this case, the campaign mechanics helped demonstrate that confidence in a way that an advertising claim would struggle to achieve.

 

3. Understanding the platform before entering it

The campaign also offers another important lesson: not all platforms work in the same way.

Reddit is built around communities, interests and conversations between users. People enter many of these spaces specifically to hear about other people’s experiences and opinions.

That means a brand cannot simply bring exactly the same strategy it uses on Instagram, TikTok or any other channel to Reddit.

It needs to understand the platform’s culture and conventions.

Dove did not try to turn Reddit into a traditional advertising showcase. It used what already made the channel interesting: open conversations and direct opinions from its users.

And that distinction matters.

Because being present on a platform does not necessarily mean understanding it.

 

4. Social media is also a research tool

Perhaps one of the most interesting aspects of Dove’s strategy is that the brand does not see Reddit solely as a communication channel.

It also uses it to listen.

According to Emily Barfoot, Dove’s US lead, Reddit conversations provide the company with insights into potential innovations, consumer needs and opportunities to expand its product range.

This perspective significantly changes the role of social media within a marketing strategy.

It is not simply about:

publishing content → generating engagement → repeating.

Digital communities can become a continuous source of information about the questions consumers have, the problems they are trying to solve, how they talk about a category or which aspects of a product they truly value.

In other words, social media can be used both to communicate and to listen.

And many brands are probably making much more use of the first part than the second.

 

5. From “one-to-many” to “many-to-many”

Dove and Unilever talk about a “many-to-many” strategy as opposed to the traditional “one-to-many” model.

For decades, the logic of advertising was fairly simple:

brand → message → audience.

The brand created the message and distributed it to as many people as possible.

Social media has changed that structure.

Now we find consumers talking to each other, creators recommending products, communities comparing experiences, users responding to brands and conversations that can continue long after a campaign has ended.

Communication increasingly resembles a network rather than a megaphone.

For brands, that means accepting something uncomfortable but necessary: they cannot control every conversation happening around them.

But they can listen to those conversations, participate appropriately and create strategies that make use of what is already happening.

 

6. Reddit is also starting to matter beyond Reddit

There is another element of this campaign that is particularly relevant to marketing today: the relationship between communities, search engines and artificial intelligence.

Dove points to two additional reasons to pay attention to Reddit.

The first is search behavior. Consumers are increasingly using social platforms and communities to research products before buying them.

The second has to do with AI.

Dove explicitly mentions the role that content from Reddit can play as a source for large language models and, therefore, in the recommendations people receive through artificial intelligence tools.

This introduces a new dimension to content strategy.

For years, brands have asked themselves:

What do we need to do to appear on Google?

Now another question is beginning to emerge:

What information about our brand exists in the sources that new search and AI systems consult, index or use?

And this is where real consumer conversations can become even more important.

 

7. The campaign works because it fits the brand

It would also be easy to focus only on the eye-catching aspect of the idea and think:

“We need to do something with Reddit.”

But that is not necessarily the lesson.

“r/eal reviews” works particularly well because it connects with a brand platform Dove has been developing since 2004: Real Beauty.

For more than two decades, the company has built its communication around the idea of showing people, experiences and beauty in a more authentic way. Turning unfiltered consumer opinions into advertising is a fairly natural evolution of that positioning.

And that is where we find an important difference between an eye-catching activation and a brand strategy.

A good campaign should not start by asking:

“What can we do on Reddit?”

It should start by asking:

“What is happening among our consumers and how can we participate in a way that is consistent with our brand?”

The channel comes afterwards.

 

8. What can other brands learn from Dove?

Not every company needs to launch a campaign featuring 50 Reddit reviews or fill a city with customer opinions.

But there are several ideas worth taking away.

The first is to listen before creating. The best content ideas do not always emerge from a creative meeting. Sometimes they are already appearing in comments, reviews, searches and customer conversations.

The second is to adapt to the culture of each channel. A social media strategy should not consist of publishing exactly the same message across five different platforms.

The third is to give the customer’s voice more space. Brands can explain perfectly well why their product is fantastic, but a real experience often brings a different kind of credibility.

And the fourth is probably the most important: build a brand that is clear enough to experiment without losing its identity.

Dove was able to turn Reddit conversations into a campaign because the idea of “realness” was already part of its positioning.

 

9. Less control, more conversation

For a long time, marketing meant controlling the message.

Today, part of the job is precisely about understanding what happens when that message no longer belongs entirely to us.

Consumers compare products, publish reviews, ask communities, follow creators and use new tools to make decisions. Brands are part of that conversation, but they are no longer necessarily at the center of it.

Dove’s campaign is interesting because it does not try to fight against that change.

It uses it.

Perhaps the future of marketing is not about finding increasingly sophisticated ways to tell people what they should think about a brand.

Perhaps it is about creating products and experiences that are good enough to be worth talking about.

 

Is your brand talking, or is it listening too?

At Jungle, we believe that a digital strategy is not simply about producing more content. It is about understanding where the relevant conversations are happening, what the audience really needs and how to connect strategy, content, campaigns and acquisition to turn that information into growth.

Because sometimes the next great campaign does not start with a briefing.

It starts by listening.