Algorithms don’t encourage difference. More and more, people are seeing a single “face of beauty” – the same features turning up again and again in social posts. The value of individuality, that Dove has been promoting for more than two decades, is being overridden as one unrealistic ideal dominates what is shown as beautiful and women are subliminally pressured to conform.

According to the Dove State of Beauty report, almost 1 in 2 women and girls in the UK feel pressurised to change their appearance even when they know an image is fake. The growing dominance of a single face of beauty online makes it even harder for women and girls to feel happy in their own individual beauty.

So during March, Dove installed a vending machine – a device that usually offers variety. But its vending machine offered the same unreal face over and over again, mirroring what is seen in social media. The Beauty Machine vending machine and campaign were captured by documentary filmmaker and photographer, Lauren Greenfield, for OOH and social media.

Dove also called on women everywhere to submit a photo celebrating their own unique beauty by sharing their selfie with the hashtag #DoveOpenCall and inviting all the women in their life to do the same.

It’s not the first time that Dove has used a vending machine  as a campaign device. In 2020, it installed a vending machine in New York City’s Grand Central Station, that gave out a bottle of Dove Body Wash in its new 100% recycled plastic bottle in return for depositing a plastic item. The vending machine itself was made from wood and aluminum and powered by a solar-charged lithium-ion battery ans was part of Unilever’s corporate goal to reduce virgin plastic packaging by half by 2025, and collect and process more plastic than it sold.