In India women spend 3 hours/day at the sink washing dishes everyday – that’s 5 years of her life. Does this not need a societal change in every mind in every home?

However, if a man does happen to wash dishes, he acts like he has done it to help the woman and brags about it. This bragging reflects a deeply embedded conditioning that dishwashing is not a man’s job. Furthermore, our research with psychological experts revealed an astounding learning that the popular media narrative to ‘share the load' also sublimely reinforced his thinking that he is helping share someone else’s load.

We had to approach this not through tokenism but drive genuine behavior change for chore neutrality.

Vim through a fake launch of a dishwashing liquid for men who like to brag, began a movement for chores neutrality.

Every chore, especially dishwashing, has been considered a woman’s domain since times immemorial. Cumulatively put together, a woman ends up spending 5 years of her life dishwashing. And if men happen to do any chores, they do it like they are doing a favor. They don’t think of household chores as their own responsibility.

Vim, the largest and fastest growing dishwashing brand of India, took it upon itself to stand for the women it served. However, this time, we needed to talk to the men, as it’s their mindset that needed changing, but also to the society that labels chores as only a woman’s job. The society exempts men from dishwashing therefore men conveniently blind side these conversations. We needed a bold provocation to get their attention.

According to a 2022 research, 40% Indians say that marriage is more satisfying if the husband provides for the family and the wife takes care of the house. This is the reverberation of an age-old patriarchal system that puts males on a higher pedestal, identifies them as the breadwinners and females, the designated caregivers.

As a result, women end up spending about 7 hours daily on domestic work as per the Time Use Survey (TUS). Even working women spend twice the amount of time on unpaid domestic work compared to working men. Research by IIM Ahmedabad defines this problem as that of “time poverty”. Household chores is the primary reason why the number of working women is less than 20% in India. The time at the kitchen sink is the time they could have been spent in skill development or career enhancement.

We wanted the society and men to realize that chores are an equal responsibility. We should be rallying for chore neutrality.

Bragging about occasional dishwashing was an outcome of a sub-conscious belief that dishwashing isn’t his job. With this campaign we wanted to stand against this age-old prejudice.

Men notice things that are made only for men…and hence we did a men’s only pack launch called Vim Black – the first ever dish washing product in the world, made only for men. Vim Black “Easy to Clean, More to Brag”.

Men occasionally wash dishes and think of it as a favor to women and hence brag. To highlight this regressive behavior, we got male influencers to launch this on Instagram and post unboxing videos, alongside bragging about occasional dishwashing. Our satirical provocation successfully created a fierce debate, and many celebrities, influencers, media joined in the conversation, pointing out the obvious. Then our leading female influencers revealed that it was a fake launch. Meanwhile CNBC picked up the conversation on FICCI. The idea of the limited-edition launch was to draw the attention of society to this nuanced but critical conversation that we must have to actually influence mass change.

We were talking to urban men, who when doing household chores consider it a help to the women – and brag. We thus decided to talk to the bragging men of India who believed that chores weren’t their assigned job. This nuanced conversation needed a strategic approach that created umbrage.

We deliberately used male influencers known for their machoism to give dishwashing a brag-tag and then let the society see the flaw in it and trash this bragging. We got female influencers to reveal that it is a fake product. A fake launch to ignite the woke brigade to shame the bragging and then a reveal to reinforce our stance on bragging-free equality was our strategy. We created the spark and as expected our urban audiences across the nation responded – because how do you ignore a dishwash liquid for men.

1. Mysterious FAKE Launch of Vim Black:

A launch film featuring the former supermodel, runner, with a large male following Milind Soman on Instagram/MTV/VH1. To amplify the intrigue, we got 6 male influencers (collective 2.4 million followers) to post unboxing videos of the product while bragging alongside.

2. Fuel to the conversation

There were over a 1000+ memes created. We partnered with Alexa & Google to activate a Vim Black mode with a male voice answering all their dishwashing excuses. There was an organic media explosion with a question on the national stage at FICCI on CNBC. Economic Times asked folks to dishwash their sense of humour! 150+ organic articles carried it on.

3. Reveal our stance of Bragging free Chore Neutrality:

We then got female influencers (10 million followers) to unveil the huge drama needed to get men to listen in - and reveal that the pack was fake.

We got social communities, industry leaders, leading platforms to debate about this unacceptable behavior seeded in prejudices. Economic Times, no. 1 financial daily sparked a conversation The prestigious CNBC FICCI, Federation-of-Indian-Chamber-of-Commerce, stage, with state ministers, corporate India discussed this.

Social Impact

- 330 million INR earned media for 35 million paid media.

- 10X earned media impact in 72 hours.

- Organic CNBC coverage 28 million. FICCI stage.

- Organic Economic Times editorial coverage – 4.2 million.

- 150+ million views and impressions on Instagram.

- +150 press articles – 95% organic.

- 1000+ memes in hours of launch.

- +5000% increase in search trend on Google.

- +1 million Instagram searches for Vim page.

- 20%+ engagement on branded content --- 6X that of industry standards.

- 93% positive conversations.

- Women care for brands that care for them - Improved 200 bps on “Brand I trust” attribute on brand track.