Vim celebrates independence from gender stereotyping in its latest ad

Vim, Hindustan Unilever’s dishwashing brand, has come out with another ad to promote its dishwashing bars. The narrative focusses on the gender disparity in Indian household chores.

The 30-second ad film was conceived by MullenLowe Lintas Mumbai. In a LinkedIn post, the agency says that Vim’s latest campaign doesn’t shy away from putting the spotlight on the naysayers, to get things right.

The ad is set in a common Indian household setting, and sees a grandmother teaching her grandson the importance of doing household chores. The boy is seen washing his utensils, and his father appears to get confused by this.

This is because, traditionally, all domestic chores are done by the women of the house. Men generally aid women in domestic work only when it is a special occasion. The father asks the grandmother whether it was Mother’s Day or the birthday of the mother.

To this, she says that the boy will be liberated from the thinking that cleaning utensils is only the duty of a woman. Seeking to liberate the man from this thinking as well, she hands him a used utensil and implores him to leave this gender stereotyping approach behind.

The commercial ends with her saying that one can easily clean their own utensils with a Vim bar and be independent from this thinking as well.

Vim’s last ad for its dishwashing liquid, Vim Black, took a satirical approach when commenting on gender disparity in domestic chores. The ad was released about four months ago and featured Milind Soman.

The brand aimed to pull of a joke when it rolled out a dishwashing liquid for men, which in fact wasn't a product that it had come out with. In the ad film, a man is seen bragging to a woman in a gym about how he helped his mother do household chores, that is, cleaning dirty utensils. Soman mocks the man for bragging about helping out at home and offers Vim Black, which will give men a chance to put in less effort in cleaning utensils and present more opportunity to brag. However, the campaign was widely criticised online and the brand had to come out with apologies for it.

Vim has been aiming to use its marketing and advertising to eliminate gender bias from dishwashing in recent times. Another campaign, released in 2020, featured cricketer Virender Sehwag cleaning utensils and urging people to bring gender equality in domestic chores. The brand has since then came out with multiple ad film's with this idea driving creatives.