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The original brief was larger than Image_Hack, as Image_Hack was only a part of a bigger campaign, that focused on "Real women". We were asked to create portraits that supported the Dove mantra about real beauty. The Image_Hack part was something we brought along to the presentation as a possibility to do something that supported that mantra.

Not at all difficult. Dove is a brave client, that constantly push the envelope. They were onboard immediately. It was much harder to convince everyone else that this was actually doable.

The inspiration comes out of a discussion about the content on stock sites when you search for "Beautiful women". We did some searches and realised that the options were very limited and figured we could do something about it.

The biggest challenge was getting photographers on board. The first batch of photographers were easy enough, as they are people we work with on a daily basis, but we knew we needed more than we could recruit ourselves. In the beginning it went very slow and at one point we almost gave up, but then the rumour spread and we began to get a lot of mails from photographers who were interested in joining the project.

There aren't so many, thats worth mentioning in an interview, but when we looked for the first women for the campaign, we knew we couldn't go to a model agency, it had to be 100% real. So we recruited amongst our own friends, family and co-workers. Some of the women in the campaign work at the agency, one is living next door to me and one is the sister of the Client Director.

I learned that no matter how ambitious a campaign idea you have, it's possible to bring to life, if you put your mind to it. A lot of people will disregard an idea like this, because it seems impossible to do, but if you refuse to call it quits, you can and will thrive.

I think it's two things. The simplicity of the idea of manipulating the algorithm of a stock site and the impact it had. If other brands hadn't joined i don't think it would have won.