Dove / Unilever

Unilever’s “real beauty” campaign for Dove is becoming increasingly clever. This time around, the soap brand and its agency, Ogilvy, employed an FBI sketch artist to draw women as they described themselves.

The artist never actually saw the women who describe themselves — they’re seated behind a curtain.

Then, someone else is asked to describe the same woman, and the sketch artist — Gil Zamora, who works as a forensic artist for the FBI — goes to work again.

Depressingly, the sketches produced from women’s self-descriptions are uglier than those drawn from strangers’ descriptions.

The side-by-side sketches in the video are compelling, but take them with a pinch of salt. Some of Dove’s previous efforts in “real beauty” have been too clever by half. It recently released a Photoshop “action” that allegedly undid airbrushing on models in fashion images — but it turned out not to work.

Prior to that, it allegedly ran a Facebook ad campaign the company claimed would let users “replace” weight-loss ads that make women feel bad about themselves. In fact, Business Insider revealed the ads did no such thing.

Creatively, however, it’s fantastic stuff: