The Campaign

In Japan, it would be difficult to suddenly achieve a 50-50 split in sharing housework. Still, the JOY team did not give up and worked tirelessly to promote a change in awareness among husbands and wives. To eventually succeed in changing attitudes, the first challenge was to change the stereotype of a Japanese couple. Research aimed at gaining insights, including social listening, news analysis, media interviews, and consumers surveys was conducted for over half a year. “Sharing household work, from a JOB to JOY.” A message was developed that could be easily accepted by Japanese society in which housework, which was perceived by couples as a “troublesome JOB,” was changed to the position of “JOY.” While listening to the opinions of sociologists, columnists, NPO representatives, and journalists strongly influential in the area of gender issues, which were derived through social listening, the correctness of the message and output were verified.

The Brief

·Video Creation: $360,000 ·Media: $230,000 ·PR: $250,000 ·Website & Digital Content: $40,000 ·Additional Media: $100,000 Video content was considered critical to building visibility for the campaign, and significant resources were dedicated to its creation to ensure sufficiently high quality. The provision of “Changing Housework from a JOB to JOY” stock photos was executed as a joint project with Aflo, with costs shared accordingly, successfully keeping costs to $40,000. The campaign spent and additional $100,000 on media in order to promote the video. To conclude the year, additional editing was performed to achieve television coverage for the couples-focused message.

Creative Execution

We persuaded Aflo, one of Japan’s largest image providers, to prepare 58 photos of couples having fun doing housework. These were made available free of charge for use on social media and in advertising. We created a video entitled “Things Shared by Two People.” It contrasted images of a couple sharing past moments of fun against the current reality of the wife performing household chores alone, urging a change in awareness about sharing housework. The campaign opened on November 22 (Good couples day), a day that garners the most interest related to couples in the year. Through our video and still picture initiatives, we made it easy for the media to find material related to “good couples.” Furthermore, “JOY Shared Housework Marriage Notifications,” wherein couples vowed to share household chores, were distributed free of charge. It was also possible to submit these notifications to government offices nationwide.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

The story was reported by 498 media sources, including major national newspapers and the public broadcaster NHK, which have a strong influence on Japanese public opinion. More than 3,000 images were downloaded from Aflo. Using a simple calculation, it has been estimated that currently one in thirty-eight people in the Japanese population have seen the video. 85% of husbands and wives responded that they wanted to “do their share of housework with a shared feeling of matrimony as a couple.” 4,500 JOY Marriage Notifications, wherein a couple can vow to share household chores and actually submit the notification to government offices, were downloaded. Numerous journalists and influencers endorsed the project, and it inspired conversation and discussion on a variety of occasions. After the project started, sales of JOY increased 40% over the previous year. P&G succeeded in changing Japanese awareness regarding housework from JOB to JOY.

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

Despite being the world’s third largest economy, Japan ranks lowest among G7 nations in terms of gender equality, and 114th worldwide. More than half of Japanese households are dual-income, yet women continue to handle approximately 90% of housework. Against this backdrop, JOY dishwashing detergent from P&G decided to try and change such stereotypes with a campaign that resonated with consumers on an emotional level. Titled Changing Housework from a JOB to JOY, the campaign and accompanying video resonated with 87% of married couples surveyed, while JOY registered a 40% YoY increase in sales for the month of November.

Millennials were set as the campaign’s target layer. By earning the empathy of millennials, we believed the message could be continually passed down to their children’s generation and the generation after that. As in other countries, millennials in Japan have a high contact rate with the Internet and social media. In looking at Japan’s top 10 internet access rankings, web browsers, email, video sites, and e-commerce sites are at the top (Nielson survey 2016). Rank Web Brand Avg. Unique Audience 1 Yahoo 2 Google 3 Microsoft 4 MSN/Outlook/Skype 5 Rakuten 6 YouTube Firstly, we decided to try and rectify the issue of only women’s images appearing when “housework” is searched for on the Internet. Additionally, as the target audience often connects to YouTube, we decided to create and upload a video to YouTube they could empathize with and help spread to encourage a change of awareness from within the home.