A leader in the body wash category has launched a fresh campaign to tout the new look and innovative technology it has brought to its product line.

Dove, which kicked off the campaign this past weekend with a pop-up event at Toronto’s Eaton Centre, has redesigned its body wash bottles for the first time in nearly two decades – a major shift driven, in part, by the brand’s mission to celebrate the body and the changes it undergoes throughout life, according to Divya Singh, category lead for skin cleansing and the Dove masterbrand at Unilever.

“Over the last 27 or 28 years, we’ve raised the bar in many areas [for body wash], but we have realized that this is a journey with no end goal. We’ve done a lot of research to understand peoples’ preferences and get insights on their differing needs and how we could evolve our product with that,” she explains. “We’re really thinking about how skin can change at different points in life.”

The new bottle design provides sharper clarity to the purpose of each product in the line while putting its 24-hour moisturizing nanotechnology front and centre with a prominent claim on the face of the bottle. In addition, the bottle is now stored head down and is slimmer so it is easier to hold in one hand and squeeze out every last drop, Singh says.

The pop-up event, called “#ChangeIsBeautiful,” was intended to fit directly into Dove’s larger creative platform, “Real Beauty,” which focuses on building women’s comfort in their own skin and celebrating people of every body type and maturity. The event welcomed consumers to pick up unique care packages geared toward points in life where people might experience major challenges with their skin, such as motherhood, aging, healing from an injury, transitioning or even just significant changes in weather.

The packages were available for sale at $5 each and intended to be gifted to family, friends or coworkers experiencing such changes in their life. The total proceeds were then donated to Plan International Canada, a non-profit with which Dove has been heavily involved for more than a decade, Singh says. Plan supports children – particularly girls – and their rights to an education, health and safety, nutrition and disaster relief.

The pop-up served as the kickoff for a larger campaign that will be in market for the next seven months across different touchpoints, including TV, digital, social and OOH – the latter, in particular, realized through a new tie-in with Metrolinx that will see the campaign prominently on display on the transit network’s GO trains, Singh says.

Partnerships with select retailers are also driving awareness and education at various points of sale, she adds. “We’re trying to make sure we don’t leave any medium or platform untouched.”