Glass: The Lion For Change > Glass: The Lion for Change

MENTAL LOAD

PROXIMITY, Madrid / PROCTER & GAMBLE / 2019

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Overview

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Overview

Background

P&G has always been deeply committed to respect for individuals. This commitment entails harnessing its advertising voice to combat sexist stereotypes, showing the world that we are all equal. The company also has a well-established HR policy that encourages a healthy work-life/family balance.

Although roles within the family are changing, 91% of women still bear the burden of coordinating schedules, planning and taking household decisions. This does not mean that tasks are not shared, rather that responsibility for ensuring that everything gets done is normally left to the woman. The consequences? Three in four women in Spain suffer from ‘mental load’. This finding was reinforced by the study conducted by the P&G Próxima a ti website.

The Mental Load project intends to be the first step towards change this situation. The goal is to get society to recognise this situation by drawing attention to an invisible problem that even the women themselves are unaware of and trigger discussion, empathy and the search for solutions.

Describe the cultural/social/political climate in your region and the significance of your campaign within this context

Spain sets an example to the world when it comes to fighting gender inequality. This became evident with the holding of the first general strike to defend women’s rights and the massive demonstrations in the country’s biggest cities in 2018. In 2019, a series of controversial court decisions in cases involving sexual violence, society’s concern with gender violence and the reaction to the rise of right-wing populist party Vox with its proposal to abolish gender violence and equality laws all contributed to the protests of the women's strike. The general election is on the horizon which, after a no-confidence motion and a government that has put women at the heart of the political agenda, all parties are being urged to join the feminist tide with their electoral proposals.

The feminist movement is reaching hitherto unforeseen dimensions. And in light of this situation, P&G has joined the struggle for equality by focusing its efforts and defining its role in a field which is coherent with its brands, helping to break down the barriers of inequality in the home.

Describe the creative idea

Three in four women in Spain suffer from ‘mental load’ caused by the overwhelming responsibility of managing the home. It’s an invisible job that even the women themselves don't see.

We wanted to reveal an unequal situation that has less to do with the chores themselves than with managing logistics in the home, and we did it by conducting a study with a sample of more than 2,400 participants and an experiment with five couples.

The video of the experiment became the focal point of the campaign and an excellent way to illustrate the existence of the problem.

Describe the strategy

P&G has been proving its commitment to gender equality for years. Once again, it wanted to take action to trigger conversations and motivate change. Because this brand is associated with the household, it was decided to focus on a problem that affects three in four women, the main cause of which is the overwhelming burden of planning household tasks.

Our campaign set out to shed light on the female problem of mental load, taking a first step to creating spaces of sisterhood among women and empathy with partners, to popularise the concept and enable women to acknowledge the problem and share the burden.

Our most powerful tool: realism. We surveyed more than 2,400 people, and conducted an experiment with real couples that revealed their own problems.

Describe the execution

The project is based on a study with more than 2,400 women, men and their children on the subject of domestic responsibilities.

As well as the study, an experiment was conducted with five real couples as a first step to understanding the situation and making a change. Aware that mental load is a silent problem, we found a silent witness to record the results: the Notes app on their mobile.

Participants were asked to record all their pending chores in the Note app of their mobile phones for a week. On the day of the experiment, they swapped mobiles with their partners and read their lists aloud. It showed that while men think about their jobs and personal affairs, women have more tasks to do, and they are closely related to domestic chores.

Describe the results/impact

We developed a real insight that had never been used by a brand before and made it a news story in the main national and international media, producing +185 clips and a total of +64,000,000 impressions with 100% positive feeling and 100% brand mentions.

•1,427,091 views and P&G video with the most organic views in Spain with +200,000 interactions.

•The website received more visits that it had since 2018, reaching the largest number of users during the campaign period.

•A total of 49% views on Facebook are organic.

•Whatsapp is the main channel used for sharing, with Youtube accounting for half of all organic traffic.

•It made the midday news on TELECINCO on 8 March, International Women's Day, reaching 1,500,000 viewers.

We made this concept visible and gave meaning to the problem, triggering conversation and understanding, resulting in a 400% increase in searches for the term in Google.

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