While the issue of gender inequality is a global one, Essity chose Hungary to pilot the idea of communicating beyond product attributes to showcase the brand's beliefs and to make an impact on a societal level.

Hungary is a divided society along traditional and contemporary lines but inequality is prevalent such as having the lowest representation of women in Parliament of all European countries https://budapestbeacon.com/female-representation-hungarian-parliament-low-iran-congo/.

Research, conducted by Essity in Hungary, told us that whilst 97% people agreed that ‘The future of my children is influenced by the examples we as parents set at home” and 87% people agreed that ‘It is important for me that my children grow up in a more equal family where home hygiene tasks are shared by all.’ today household hygiene tasks are split unevenly between men (31%) and women (69%).

This imbalance of actual household roles only creates a perpetual cycle of unfairness.

We asked children about what roles they see their mums and dads do at home. We got many stereotypical answers such as "mum usually cooks for us", "dad drives", "mum does the dishes".

Next, we asked these same children to run an obstacle race with a difference. The girls ran an extra loop including hygiene tasks (in Hungarian, the idea of the extra loop translates for the additional work women do at home) so even if they were typically far ahead in the race, there was literally no way they could win.

We captured the kids' reactions to the result of this "unfair" race. The metaphor was clearly understood by the kids:

"this is nonsense", "I'm not happy it was harder", "mum's lane is harder too" and "the boys should have done some extra tasks too, to even the odds".

We sent this message out to the people of Hungary.

At the heart of the idea was to find a way to bring the very serious issue to life in a way that didn't feel like the brand was lecturing parents or, worse, making them feel like bad parents. It had to raise the issue and allow parents to think for themselves about the impact of their roles at home.

We knew from the commissioned survey that many Hungarian parents agreed with the idea of equality for their children but that perhaps they hadn't considered the impact of seemingly normal everyday tasks.

Getting the kids to spread the message both heightened the impact whilst not making the brand feel like an overbearing professor lecturing on the "right" way to do things. We really wanted parents to consider for themselves the impact they might be having.

With a very limited media budget we knew that key to the success of the campaign would be to create a compelling and easily understood narrative via a hero film that could easily be shared but to then leverage that asset with key activists, media partners and PR. All 3 came together with the media support we could afford to deliver a reach and impact far beyond the spend.

The campaign ran from October to December 2018 in Hungary with online media support driving to the Zewa campaign hub page https://www.zewa.net/hu/gondoskodni-egyutt-jo/

Zewa social channels (predominantly Facebook and Youtube) hosted the content and generated comments and debate from the public.

We partnered with local activists Joco Bacsi, Deliaga Eva and Szel David to really stoke the debate and the local marketing team in Hungary appeared on Mokka, a big breakfast TV show, to talk about the campaign and the issue.

The campaign reached an estimated 3.5 million people in Hungary - more than 35% of the entire population (that's like 23 million Britons or 114 million Americans) with a Brand Lift study showing ad recall at 48.9% - an all time high for Zewa.

PR delivered exceeded the paid media by a ratio of over 3:1

Engagement levels have been 5 times higher than previous Essity campaigns.

The full 3 minute hero OLV has 12% complete view through - even exceeding the results of the Essity "Blood Normal" campaign.

A post-campaign survey showed that "87% of people agreed that it is important for me that my children grow up in a more equal family".

The results delivered massively exceeded the expectations driven by the budget available and has opened up new opportunities for this kind of approach in the future.