• Situation

Dove Men+Care is championing paternity leave globally (our office helped launch the campaign). However, different markets have different barriers preventing men from taking paternity leave. Some countries have no access to leave. Other countries are too poor to take leave.

Last year, only 12% of new fathers in English Canada used any of their parental leave benefit. For many, a major barrier is social stigma. For example, 31% of Canadian fathers think if they take two weeks of paternity leave, it will negatively impact their career.

On March 17th, the Government of Canada enacted new legislation that provides an additional 5 weeks of “use-it-or-lose it” paternity leave in Canada.

• Brief

Our brief was to ensure Dove Men+Care’s continued commitment to paternity leave had local relevance.

• Objectives

Our objective was simple: Encourage more Canadian fathers to take paternity leave.

Dove Men+Care wants men to #TakeTheTime to change the conversation, to #TakeTheTime to support paternity leave, and to #TakeTheTime to take advantage of Canada's new paternity leave benefit.

The #TakeTheTime campaign documented five dads over five weeks of paternity leave—and launched on the same day as the legislation that provided an additional five weeks of “use-it-or-lose-it” paternity leave.

The campaign dispels long-standing social stigmas by juxtaposing them against the reality of paternity leave.

Our primary target was expectant fathers. Our secondary target was the public at large. We knew we would have to challenge expectant fathers’ own reservations about paternity leave – and also the societal expectations around paternity leave held by the general public.

And that’s because from an early age, most young boys are taught that men are breadwinners, not caregivers. Their entire masculine identity is tied to “working.” So not working therefore feels like a pause in one’s identity as a man.

Most men understand and desire the benefits of taking parental leave yet social stigma prevent them from doing so. We believed if we could juxtapose the experience of dads on paternity leave against the societal stigma of taking it, we could force a re-evaluation of the norms that prevented men from taking it in the first place.

The broader campaign challenged perceptions of paternity leave with short, provocative videos and polls in digital out-of-home and on social. This film then allowed viewers to delve deeper into the lives of our fathers.

Our film debuted online on YouTube. The film was also uploaded to Facebook and LinkedIn and was shared on Twitter and Dove Men+Care’s homepage, which served as the hub of our campaign.

• At launch, #TakeTheTime represented 45% of all conversations on paternity leave – on the same day as a major new piece of legislation on parental leave took effect.

• The campaign garnered 109,192,000 earned impressions.