Indian women spend 3 hours/day washing dishes, amounting to 5 years of her life. This calls for a profound societal shift in every household. When men do wash dishes, they often consider it a favor and boast about it. This demands a societal conversation involving influencers, celebrities, journalism, and various platforms. Our male influencers launched Vim Black, and our female influencers revealed it was fake, sparking a national debate. This organic discourse united voices in denouncing such bragging, including at the FICCI stage. It’s a story of how we changed perspectives at a sink by creating a debate in society.

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.

In India women spend 3 hours/day at the sink washing dishes everyday – that’s 5 years of her life.

However, if a man does happen to wash dishes, he acts like he has done it to help the woman and brags. This bragging reflects a deeply embedded conditioning that dishwashing is not a man’s job.

This needed a societal change in every mind. But not through tokenism, through genuine behavior change.

Vim through a fake launch of a dishwashing liquid for men began a movement for chores neutrality.

This work evoked conversations and debates and outrage equally. Outrage from a group on why a male dishwashing liquid…debates on how it’s a brilliant way to show a mirror to men and conversations on chore equality at the highest platforms in the country – which we hope will never end.

Never has a dishwashing liquid stirred a debate earning 10X the paid media.

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 favour to women and hence brag. To highlight this regressive behaviour, 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. And 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.