Most cleft-affected women are apprehensive about wearing bright lipstick due to lack of representation.
In India, over 35,000 people are born with a cleft each year, yet there was not a single beauty-related image found when we searched for "Indian woman with cleft".
We set out to bring representation for cleft in the mainstream media and reimagine the parameters of beauty with that.
Smile Train India built the First Ever Cleft-Inclusive Image Repository on Shutterstock for brands to use in their ads and communication at large.
Our panel discussion with Brut. India also stirred up the conversation.
We managed to make noise for beauty to be more fluid, more inclusive through representation, in our attempt to eventually create a world where we need no representation at all.
* 16M+ Reach
* 22M+ Views
* 39K+ Engagements
* 2M+ Earned Media Value with global PR coverage
* Brands like Dabur, So Good, Brita were the first ones to use these images in their communication
* Organizations like Miss Diva, Feminism In India, Face Equality International started talking about the initiative organically
* Influencers like Shibani Bedi, Pratik Gandhi, Amol Parashar and more also talked about the initiative organically
And the real success was seen in the multiple comments, DMs and shares that we received from the cleft community appreciating this campaign.
We achieved all this on a shoestring budget of $13,200.
