Dive Brief:

• P&G's Herbal Essences brand unveiled a four-minute video that showcases women who've embraced and been empowered by change, per a press release. In the mini-documentary, four women share their motivations for making a change in their lives and how it let them live more fully. 
• The campaign includes the hashtags #LetLifeIn and #EmbraceChange to encourage people to share their own stories on social media, for anything from a memorable haircut to a major life event. Herbal Essences is also leveraging its network of influencers to further the dialogue online.
• The brand surveyed women between 18 and 35 and found that 90% who made a change in their lives in the past year said it positively impacted them. Seventy-five percent said changing how they look made it easier to make other life changes.

Dive Insight:

Herbal Essences's latest campaign hits on a number of current marketing trends, including longer-form video content with a message of positivity and a focus on narrative storytelling over showcasing product alone. The influencers and hashtags should provide the P&G marketer a source of user-generated content to further spread its message and brand share on social media.

There have been a number of campaigns based around positivity and personal stories of late, particularly from women-focused beauty and lifestyle brands. Unilever's Dove has worked closely with the TV showrunner Shonda Rhimes on similar, documentary-style projects. Their most recent short, titled "Meet Diana," focused on a woman re-discovering her confidence after a tragic accident, and racked up over 1 million YouTube hits. 

With these types of efforts, marketers walk a fine line in potentially laying it on too thick or coming across as ingenuine in peddling a product around real-world issues. Herbal Essences, in this case, might be riding that line as the survey included a less-than-subtle push toward women changing their appearance, with a data point suggesting that one-third of respondents said it would be hard to change their lifestyle without also changing their hair. The campaign's audience might find that a bit too brand-specific and only tangential to the broader theme of more significant change and empowerment.