8 years ago, when household products were targeted at women and the detergent category spoke only of functional features, Ariel changed the game by championing gender equality in household chores.

Over 8 years, Ariel’s #ShareTheLoad has withstood strong competition and market forces. Each year, we tell a story that both hits close to home and opens eyes, going deeper into diverse contexts to bring alive the issue of gender inequality at home.

Patriarchy persists despite some mindset-shift over time. In most households, domestic responsibilities still default to women. To raise the stakes, we had to find a way to bring alive the serious, widespread consequences of not sharing the load—not only on women, but on people’s relationships and families.

We needed an eye-opening provocation that would build on our existing authority on the topic, create social impact and beat our behemoth competition and personal benchmarks.

IDEA - See The Signs of ‘Silent Separation’ #ShareTheLoad.

We found that 81% women feel that unequal distribution of chores has affected their relationship.

CREATIVE INSIGHT: Women start withdrawing silently from relationship over time because of unequal sharing of household chores.

In our work, we gave a name to the familiar yet unrecognized phenomenon of Silent Separation: the distance that creeps into couples’ relationships over time due to years of gendered inequality in the distribution of household chores and responsibility.

Throughout the campaign, we called upon men to recognize the signs that this distance has materialized, and recognize their own lack of contribution towards household chores as a key cause, eventually provoking behaviour change in them.

INSIGHT: Women start withdrawing silently from relationship over time because of unequal sharing of household chores.

KEY MESSAGE: See The Signs of ‘Silent Separation’ #ShareTheLoad.

TARGET AUDIENCE:

Urban Indian women aged 35-65. 2 psychographic sub-groups -

Progressive Equalizers - question conventions and believe in gender equality in the home.

Reluctant-progressives - believe in gender equality but do not challenge the inequalities in their own homes

We wanted our film to be a story familiar to these cohorts, with an empathetic and eye-opening perspective that would make people share and discuss it with others. To maximize its shareability and reach, it had to be highly relatable and emotionally powerful. We planned our on-ground events to reach our audience in real life and show actionable change beyond lip service, thus generating PR and furthering our objective of creating strong conversations around the issue and the brand.

EXECUTION -

(1) Coined ‘Silent Separation’ to illustrate how signs of inequality at home hurt relationships in the long-run, spread it in culture through a short-film,using social-media, cinema, print, influencers, national-TV and on-ground.

(2) For the first-time, we turned to an untapped source of influencers. We conducted a sharing session with house-helps who spoke about the signs of ‘Silent Separation’ they notice in the lives of couples whose house they work at.

(3) At a mass vow-renewal event, men went down on their knee, and committed to be equal partners.

BUSINESS IMPACT –

•Penetration grew to 20% with 10.4mm new users. At 63.3 MM HHs, Ariel achieved its highest ever households.

•Sales growth of 35% (7 points above YA).

BRAND IMPACT -

•Highest consideration at 81%

•Increased brand-awareness scores to 71%, exceeding benchmark of 65%

•Overall equity moved to 18 points from 10points in YA, especially in premium households.

•Functional attributes rose: stain removal equity increasing 1.8x YA.

•Attribute that moved the most: “the brand stands for progress and a brand of today”

COMMUNICATION IMPACT -

•154 million views—30% more than 115 million views of YA

•1.4 billion impressions, 0.4 billion more than benchmark.

•Reception of film (Ipsos):

• Brand Attention Index reached 137,exceeding the standard range of 85 to 115- People remembered the ad and unmissably connected it back to Ariel

•PERCEPTION CHANGE:

• In 2015, 79% men believed that laundry is only a woman’s job—it is 26% today.