The Campaign

There are no relevant restrictions related to the category Ariel operates in. But having said that, over the years branded content has become a powerful way to engage with consumers whose attention is fragmented across media and screens. As a result, brands across the board are investing in branded content to engage the consumers.

Results

Ariel is the most expensive detergent in India. The problem it was facing was loss of emotional equity and relevance. The client brief – get the attention of and engage our consumers around Ariel’s promise of ‘best stain removal in one wash so that anyone can do laundry’ to make the brand more relevant. Here we unearthed an interesting statistic: ‘76% of married-women feel men prefer relaxing over helping with household chores’. Deeper analysis into this pointed us to an inequality embedded culturally in each and every Indian home… where women can be equal contributors to the family income, but the burden of household chores still lies on their shoulders. With this understanding Ariel decided to stand up for women’s equality at home with #ShareTheLoad – a provocative social movement that exposed the inequality embedded in each and every Indian home. We kicked off the movement with an ad that asked an important question – ‘is laundry a woman’s job?’ This provocative message sparked a national conversation. The campaign started by raising an important question – Is laundry only a woman’s job? While this was provocative, it was not enough. We needed to reach out to men and women in ways that created impact and got them to talk about our message. Here we took up the task of making men Laundry Graduates in less than a minute. To achieve this, we set-up installations which through a series of steps enabled men walking into the tunnel complete laundry within a minute. We used an app to test their LIQ (laundry IQ) and as a gratification of their efforts doned them with graduation robes.

The specific task was to make men and women talk about gender inequality at home and create a mind-set shift. But our challenge was to reach out to men and women in places where our message would create maximum impact as well as get talked about. Here is where we saw the opportunity to demonstrate in an interactive way Ariel’s promise of ‘best stain removal in one wash so that anyone can do laundry’ by making men Laundry Graduates in less than a minute.

As the branded content piece got shared, it added to the success of the #ShareTheLoad movement The campaign got the attention of and engaged with our TG: • Unaided Brand Awareness increased by 132% within the first month. • The campaign generated free-media worth USD 9.5 million • Over 1.57million men pledged to ‘Share the Load’ across the country through mobile, social media and mall activations • 1.6 billion free earned Impressions • On Facebook, engagement-rate went up a record 225%. The campaign drove preference for Ariel • Sales grew 60% versus a year ago.

Indian women have two jobs – one at office and another at home. They do the household chores alone. 87% of Indian men believe laundry is woman’s job and they don’t do laundry simply because they don’t know how-to. Ariel decided to stand up for equality of women at home with #ShareTheLoad. We started with an important question – Is laundry only a woman’s job? But that wasn’t enough. Our challenge was to reach out to men and women in places where our message would create maximum impact and get talked about. We took up the task of making men Laundry Graduates in less than a minute. To achieve this, we set-up installations which through series of steps enabled men walking into the tunnel to complete laundry within a minute. We used an app to test their LaundryIQ and, as a gratification of their efforts, donned them with graduation robes.