Iconic Ads: Share the Load – Ariel

In 2014-15, P&G asked BBDO India to build emotional equity for Ariel, the flagship detergent brand from P&G. Ariel was doing exceedingly well.

Josy Paul knew that advertising the detergent’s ‘one-wash’ performance was not enough.

Paul, along with his team, was looking for ‘something more empathetic, something to empower women. He knew that it had to come from the goings-on in women’s lives and factors influencing them.

The first step was different departments held confession sessions where people talked about their lives resulting in a startling and sad fact – women in India spend close to five hours doing household work and the men only 19 minutes.

Despite talk of gender equality, the nasty truth is that there is a skewed distribution burden of domestic work.

This was a dirty truth which no one wanted to address. There was a concern. There was a gender expectation mismatch

Ariel’s brand proposition was – it washes the most stubborn stains with just one wash.’ Paul added – ‘Anyone can do it.’ 

The pigeonhole of laundry is only a woman’s job was questioned. The stereotype was probed. 

“This is how the Share the Load campaign was born,” 

The campaign highlights the anomaly that while women have done great professionally, at home things have not changed much, and she is possibly doing the same amount of work as before.

Four hypothesis and ideas were shared with the Ariel brand team. And they picked this one

‘Is Laundry only a woman’s job’? 

And there was a 100+% increase in sales