Hindustan Unilever recently stirred the kitchen sink with a dishwash product meant only for men (campaign by the agency MullenLowe Lintas).
How do we know that the new Vim is only for men?
Well, for starters, it says so, on the pack.
And it comes in a black-colored pack, meant to allure men instantly if we go by conventional FMCG color codes.
Does the product really exist?
There is a product page on HUL’s official e-commerce store!
If you read the outlandish copy on the product page, you’d almost conclude that this is all satirical. The product has no price either.
So, fake product? Yes! Here’s the official confession a day later.
What is the point of a fake product like this?
Remember another recent fake product that doesn’t really exist but was made available in limited numbers online and at select Star Bazaar outlets in Mumbai? Oh yes, Bournvita… in containers that look like other product category containers, like toilet cleaners, egg cartons, and so on.
The point of such fake products? Arguably, to generate a conversation. At least that is the front end of the justification.
The back end of that justification is advertising awards, of course.
So, what does HUL’s Vim want to convey through this men-only dishwash product?
If you see the ad starring Milind Soman, it gets somewhat clearer.
Here’s another ad in the series, incidentally.
The campaign mocks men for bragging about even their very, very occasional effort of doing the dishes, and mounting it as some kind of monumental achievement that they performed while coming down from their exalted pedestal.
The sarcasm is blisteringly sharp and incisive. Men watching the ad, and seeing the product (albeit fake) would have no other option but to cringe at themselves and their brethren. The brand’s intent comes out very clearly when you see both the ad and the product page together.
Just the product alone? That may lead to confusing signals starting with ‘Is this for real?’, considering this is December, not April 1.
But there is a much larger context to Vim’s effort.
Vim signed up Indian cricketer Virender Sehwag to do the dishes back in 2020, for that year’s IPL campaign. This was the first time Vim had shown a man doing the dishes.
Then, in December 2021, Vim doubled down on the Sehwag campaign with another perspective – a couple, arranged by the families, meet for the first time and discuss the split in household work. The guy says that he’d help in the cooking too and ends it with ‘No big deal’!
The girl asks him, ‘Then, I’ll help you in doing the dishes! No big deal!’.
The jibe, delivered very smoothly and in good humor by the girl, lands perfectly and the guy gets the point loud and clear (within the context of how the ad ends).
The latest Vim Black campaign seems to be an abrasive extension of the December 2021 campaign.
Why do I call it abrasive?
Because the jibe in the earlier campaign is an intimate conversation between 2 people. The jibe and sarcasm in the new campaign is a broader announcement to all men.
But, why shouldn’t it be abrasive? Isn’t it a massively persistent problem that men look down upon household tasks, and worse, look at them as meant for women only? Surely that deserves as much scorn and derision as needed to make men get on the line, right?
If Vim’s intention with Black was to stir a conversation, what would be the intended goal of such a conversation? I’d assume that would be to change social attitudes, towards sharing the household work and not treat it as the domain of women alone. This would be a very long-term goal, however, and it would be unfair to expect this long-term goal to materialize out of one or more of Vim’s campaigns alone. It may need a whole lot more effort to achieve that goal beyond just a few brands stirring up conversations.
A more immediate goal, from Vim’s perspective, would be to get more men into the discussion table about sharing household tasks.
P&G’s Ariel did that rather successfully with its long-running Share The Load campaign, for context. (agency: BBDO India)
The tone of Share The Load is very, very different. It aims to communicate with impact by simply letting us see the ugly truth, and by showing the actual change (at least in ads). It shows us the mirror of a real-life scenario, and when we see it from the outside, it hits hard.
Vim’s 2020 Sehwag campaign too was on similar lines – ‘show a popular man doing the dishes’. The 2021 December campaign idea too was mildly similar – put forward the view as a conversation between 2 people trying to understand each other.
This is also almost the tactic employed by Sabhyata in their 2019 Diwali campaign, where the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law gang up (spoiler!) to get the son/husband to do the cooking! (agency: p se picture)
This was also the same tactic used by Lloyd washing machine, for the 2015 campaign called ‘Unisex washing machine’ (an early precursor to Vim Black, in a way!) which was narrated as a conversation between the husband, wife, and an adequately embarrassed washing machine store salesman (agency: RK Swamy BBDO).
In all the 3 campaigns—Vim’s December 2021 ad, Sabhyata’s Diwali 2019 ad, and the 2015 Lloyd washing machine ad—observe who is delivering the message with a tinge of irony and sarcasm. In Vim, it is the girl; in the Sabhyata ad, it’s the combination of mother-in-law and daughter-in-law; in the Lloyd washing machine ad, it is the wife. Directed at? The guy who is presumably going to marry the girl; the husband/son; the husband.
Meaning: the sarcasm is delivered by someone close to the men.
In the Vim Black campaign? It is the brand that lands the sarcasm as a way to publicly mock the men in one sweeping brush. There is no relationship between the men who brag in Vim’s ads and Milind Soman, who happens to be the brand’s voice. In other words, it is the brand shaming men for not doing enough.
This lands very differently from the same sarcasm applied through people close to the men in the earlier ads I have cited.
So, if the immediate goal for Vim was to get men into the discussion table, the Sehwag campaign, and the December 2021 campaign did that appropriately. Rule number 1 of bringing a party into a conversation is to not alienate them by mocking them in broad strokes.
Of course, you may argue that Indian men are totally hopeless, and brutally mocking them is the only way left to make them see the ugly truth of their outdated thinking. That, however true it may be, is not very productive if you consider basic human psychology. If you need someone’s cooperation, there are 2 ways – make them feel welcome, or order them. Vim creates for a 3rd option – mock them. That may not be all that purposeful IF the aim was to work towards change, some change, however small.
For men who already share the work at home, this ad isn’t going to do anything. This is clearly directed at men with a bloated ego and a superiority complex, besides staggering laziness. Now, if they were broad-minded, they’d be already sharing the work at home. But if they are not all that open-minded, would they welcome a public shaming session like this directed broadly at all men? They obviously may not because the joke is on them!
So, if the conversation is not purposeful, could Vim argue that the campaign was intended to generate buzz? After all, any buzz/publicity is good for the brand, right?
Hardly!
Generating buzz has truly been democratized thanks to social media. Anything and everything generates more than enough buzz these days. Remember the Layer’r Shot ad that generated a LOT of buzz back in June 2022?
So, if talk is cheap and anything and everything generates talk effortlessly these days, brands would need to think hard and come up with communication that directs the buzz in specific ways that aid the brand’s intended narrative. The Vim Black campaign directs talk in 2 ways:
– it gives women something to mock men with (perfectly justified. And totally understandable)
– it directs people to a non-existent product (which is rather pointless for Vim)
What does the first do? It merely accentuates the problem and continues to alienate the one party that needs to join the darn conversation. And worse, it sells the same product to women (assuming women look at Vim positively for taking their side).
The second? All that attention… to something that doesn’t exist?
The most ironic thing though is about Vim itself. Consider this.
As soon as Vim roped in Sehwag for the 2020 campaign, it went on a massive PR overdrive tom-tomming all across media about how Vim was aiming to normalize men in the kitchen. HUL’s spokesperson was quoted as saying, “Being an industry leader, we are committed to contributing to positive cultural change as well as making better connections with people through our advertising”.
In other words, HUL was bragging about doing something very noble for society.
But, do you know which other dishwash brand used a male model doing the dishes BEFORE Vim?
Henkel’s Pril. In December 2018! In an ad featuring Gurmeet Chaudhary doing the dishes like it’s his everyday duty.
So, Vim is mocking men for bragging when they do a bit of dishwash. And Vim goes to town bragging just after they showed Virender Sehwag in the kitchen doing the dishes (that Henkel/Pril did without any bragging, almost as if it’s not a big deal—to quote Vim ad’s phrase—at all). The connecting theme: so little effort, so much bragging!
I wonder if Vim should be subject to the same mockery that it drops on men in the Vim Black campaign.