Ariel is a leading detergent brand in India, but it was suffering from loss of emotional equity and relevance. Specifically, consumers saw it as a brand ‘not for people like me’.

The client brief was clear – 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: ‘87% of Indian men believe laundry is a woman's job’. 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 ‘Share the Load’ – a provocative social movement that exposed the inequality embedded culturally in each and every Indian home. 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 in media.

Here is where we saw the opportunity to turn an ignored, but important part of the garment – the wash care label – into an advocate for gender-equality at home with Ariel’s #ShareTheLoad wash-care labels. It wasn’t just embraced by garment manufacturers, retailers and designers; it also caught the attention of the media who covered it and the message of gender equality at home behind it.

Ariel is one of the most expensive detergents in India. To drive relevance of the brand, Ariel decided to address the issue of inequality at home through the launch of #ShareTheLoad.

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.

Hence we created the world’s first gender neutral wash care label. This label was embraced by leading clothing brands, manufacturers, retailers and designers. Not just that influential Indians came out in support of the label and the message of equality behind it. It also generated huge amounts of interest in media and social media.

The Ariel #ShareTheLoad wash care label immediately grabbed the attention of people and media.

• Leading clothing brands, manufacturers, retailers and designers embraced the label.

• Influential Indians came out in support of the new wash care label and the message of equality at home behind it.

• Not just that, it grabbed the attention of the media and people on social media.

• Unaided Brand Awareness increased by 132% within the first month.

• The campaign generated free-media worth USD 9.5 million

• Millions of men pledged to ‘Share the Load’ across the country

• On Facebook, engagement-rate went up a record 225%.

• On Twitter #ShareTheLoad trended nationally with over 8 million impressions.

• Sales went up by 60%.