Dove has partnered with Ogilvy Toronto to develop a project dubbed Real Beauty Sketches, inspiring women to see beauty in themselves. With the help of a portraitist, the brand has explored the difference between how women perceive themselves and how others see them. The findings are revealed in the key 3-minute web film as well as in a series of shorter interviews.

For the project Dove tapped FBI-trained forensic artist Jil Samora to draw sketch portraits of seven ladies. He was guided by their voice instructions only since there was a curtain between the artist and the women. Their self-descriptions included all the details about what they looked like, ranging from hair length and facial structure to their most prominent features—all as they saw it.

The women were asked to get to know each other before the sessions, and the artist also invited the participants to describe one of the women in the group and created portraits based on this information. So, he presented two sketches for each lady—one created using her own words and the other drawn from the description by another person. The result was truly impressive—the second version was always much prettier and even more accurate than the first one. All fourteen pencil-drawn portraits of women along with the videos of the “models” have been posted to the Real Beauty Sketches page.

“Women are their own worst beauty critics. Only 4% of women around the world consider themselves beautiful… we decided to conduct a compelling social experiment that explores how women view their own beauty in contrast to what others see,” states Dove. The initiative is part of the brand’s long-time commitment under the “Dove Campaign for Real Beauty” banner introduced back in 2004 in attempt to help women around the globe raise their self-esteem.