Dove

Turning Y2K Nostalgia Into a Body Confidence Reset

How do you show up for millennial women when beauty culture takes a step backward?

Background

In 2025, culture hurtled into a 2000s nostalgia spiral.

Low-rise jeans. Hyper-thin beauty standards. Tabloid-era beauty ideals repackaged as aesthetic mood boards.

Beneath the throwback energy was a quieter regression. Representation narrowed. Old pressures resurfaced. Millennial women felt it most. Dove’s Real State of Beauty research found millennials reporting the lowest body confidence of any generation.

At the same time, this was a generation that helped mainstream therapy language, self-development, and evidence-based wellbeing. They weren’t passive consumers of culture. They were questioning it. For the first time, Dove introduced scientifically validated body confidence tools built specifically for adult women.

The question wasn’t what to say. It was creating the right environment for reflection, honesty, and change.

Journey

We launched Why2K?—a podcast developed in partnership with Spotify Equal. The series unpacked early-aughts beauty messaging and paired cultural critique with science-backed tools to rebuild confidence.

Instead of launching another podcast into an already crowded category, we embedded Dove within trusted, female-led shows including Happy Place and Millennial Mind. The brand entered conversations audiences already relied on.

The content combined:

  • Cultural hindsight and truth-telling
  • Expert-backed body confidence science
  • Standout voices from the era, including Pamela Anderson and Rita Ora
  • Unfiltered conversations about body image and identity

We ecosystem extended across long-form audio, social storytelling, creator partnerships, Spotify Equal placements, and live cultural conversations.

This wasn’t nostalgia marketing. It was a cultural reset.

Outcomes

Why2K? shifted the nostalgia conversation from revival to reflection.

  • 700M
    total impressions

  • 240M
    video views

  • 850k+
    hours of content consumption

  • 90th
    percentile performance across Spotify brand metrics

  • 51%
    CTR within target audience

  • 7
    global markets activated

  • 27
    influencer partners

  • 246
    press placements, 90% featuring Dove in headlines

See more of our work.

How can we help?