Gender equality has swiftly become a hot topic in Argentina of late, with even the Spanish language under scrutiny. Spanish words are either masculine or feminine, and many have noted that certain words like “cleaning” are feminine and are strengthening gender stereotypes. They have since started creating their own gender-neutral versions.

Ni Una Menos started in March 2015 in Buenos Aires in reaction to the murder of Daiana Garcia, who was found dead in a garbage bag earlier that month. It was originally conceived to protest Argentina’s high rate of femicide, defining itself as a “collective scream against machista violence.” Since its inception, however, it has become the banner for a number of feminist issues, including transgender rights, sex worker’s rights, sexual harassment, gender pay gap, the legality of abortion and gender roles.

We called the campaign ParejasParejas (Project 50/50).

In a world dominated by smart phones and smart technology, we created the world’s first smart bottle. A bottle of Mr Muscle® with a fingerprint scanner similar to the ones used to unlock iPhones, it knew when it was being used, how long it was being used and who was using it.

We made a limited number of these bottles and sent them out to prominent Argentinian social media influencer couples. They used the bottle in their kitchens, posted about their experiences using the product and their experiences regarding how much they felt they and their partners were cleaning. In the end, the bottle was the objective intercessor it was designed to be. It collected the data that we needed to prove that the cleaning gap was alive and unwell and clearly still an issue that needed addressing.

It would be easy for us to say that women do most of the household cleaning. Everyone would agree with us. Where it got tricky was where we said that men should do more of it.

Men already felt that they had significantly upped their game when it came to household chores. They cooked more, they did more grocery shopping, they helped with the kids more, they did yardwork and they cleaned more. Interestingly, they were right about everything, with one exception – cleaning. Men were helping out more with other domestic duties and, strangely enough, felt that even applied to cleaning, when studies showed that they hadn’t increased their proportion of cleaning chores for over 20 years.

Men acknowledged that women did the majority of the cleaning, the problem was they didn’t think the gap was big enough to warrant intervention. Men thought the discrepancy was around 60/40 in favour of women. Women felt it was more like 90/10.

However, we already knew the answer to our question. Women did 40% more household cleaning than men, but rather than simply tell men that, we thought it would be better if they discovered it for themselves.

We expanded beyond the brand’s core base to a new, younger audience of 2.7 million unique users through our influencers’ Instagram followings.

Mr Muscle® promoted content on Facebook and Instagram amplified the campaign with 20.7 million impressions over four weeks.

Videos sharing the influencers’ perspectives on cleaning equality in their own homes garnered 797,000+ views in three weeks through the influencers’ channels and Mr Muscle® amplification on Facebook and Instagram.

And last, but not least, we started a conversation on the topic of cleaning equality in Argentina. As a result of the program and influencer partnerships, there were more than 36,000 likes, comments and shares on content created for Mr Muscle® Project 50/50 in just three weeks — the equivalent of total engagements on Mr Muscle® Argentina's Facebook page from the previous two months of paid promotion.