Picture someone washing the dishes. Do you picture a woman or a man? Likely, a woman. It’s this mindset that VIM set out to change with their latest campaign. And they did that with a whole lot of flair!
It was a campaign that had many twists and turns, a few laughs and one beautiful man that the country is obsessed with aka Milind Soman.
Let’s dive in.
First, came the tease. Enter VIM Black.
This was a seemingly new product launch by VIM. All new packaging, intended to appeal to men.
The pitch was that VIM Black is designed to make dishwashing super easy for men and to give men more bragging rights that they helped someone out with the dishwashing chore.
If you’re about to start rolling your eyes, hold on for just one minute.
Milind Soman dropped this video.
And it’s basically… epic. Have a look.
What could be more brag-worthy than a grown man helping a woman wash dishes?
The sarcasm was on point. The message was landing without even being articulated. Genius!
The other films in the VIM Black series all took every day situations and made light of the male protagonist almost seeking validation and applause for dishwashing.
It was clever, it was sharp and it was definitely engaging.
The films hinted at a simple message in a twisted yet powerful manner: Society shouldn’t applaud men for doing a basic adult chore like dishwashing.
The Big Reveal:
VIM Black is not a new product! It’s the same dishwashing liquid and everything was just a prank to drive a message.
You don’t need a new product to make dishwashing easy for men. All you need is for men to simply wash the dishes. It’s as easy as that!
In fact this is not the first time that Vim has spoken about men washing dishes. In 2020 they ran the ‘Sehwag’ campaign showing him washing dishes in the kitchen, post which they aired the Vim ‘young boy girl’ ad where the message was for men to be independent and own household chores.
But it took a strong and powerful male stereotype (black packaging) to generate conversations on female stereotypes.
The campaign was further amplified in interesting activations leveraging influencers.
Famous faces on the internet conducted an elaborate unboxing of their VIM Black hampers that they received from Milind Soman.
A witty and fun campaign that landed a powerful message: the dishwashing liquid remains the same, what needs to change is the perspective towards the task.
Kudos, VIM!
