Allergan: Dream Initiative
A Lens Into Inclusivity in Aesthetics
The situation:
Allergan wanted to improve the diversity and inclusion of its marketing, but the professional health community suffered from a lack of diversity. Telling healthcare professionals that change is needed wasn’t enough to create action. We needed to show through strong data and real stories that the lack of diversity was hurting our culture today and affecting the bottom line when it came to getting women to follow through with wellness and aesthetic-based treatment plans. Allergan also needed to show that it had a confirmed positive purpose as a substantial brand value, given its history within the industry and its strong influence on setting beauty standards through its services and offerings. Allergan needed to put a stake in the ground and raise the bar for diversity and inclusion for the full beauty, skin, and wellness industry. Inclusion needs to be the standard, be needs to happen now.
The idea and execution:
The change most women want in the beauty industry is to see "real women" reflected in beauty advertising. The industry has to change drastically to evolve with our cultural needs. Studies show that Black women feel aesthetic treatments are not for them because many doctors lack training in treating Black skin. Asian and American beauty standards drastically differ. And Asian-American women face the duality of wanting to fit both. Women of all races strongly believe that "one of us cannot represent all of us."
Enter the Forces of Beauty campaign- including partnerships, reports, digital brand building, video work, and marketing assets to help create change and positive movement within the beauty, skincare, aesthetics, and professional community.
The Forces of Beauty® report is a study from approximately 4,000 women of various racial and ethnic backgrounds. In addition to valuable data, their voices lend firsthand narratives to the larger conversation around representation in beauty marketing.
Our research provides aesthetics practitioners, media, and industry leaders insights to understand better the dynamic between beauty and racial identity for women within the United States. Let's make the world of aesthetics more inclusive and better serve all patients.
Making Inclusion the Standard
Authentic representation in aesthetics has long been lacking—until now. United by a shared desire to create diverse content on a larger scale, The DREAM Initiative® partnered with Shutterstock Studios and skin better science® to advance inclusive representation on both sides of the camera. Together with these images, we’re ensuring inclusive representation is available to the public.
We cast hundreds of models from all walks of life, capturing what each perceives as beautiful about themselves. The result? Thousands of images authentically showcase beauty across race, culture, gender, age, and body type. All are available royalty-free. We want to empower individuals of every gender, ethnicity, culture, age, and body type by helping them see more of themselves represented in the advertising and media they consume. These images are yours to use, free.