Israeli Ad Targets Male Caregivers
So remember how I was saying that you never see men represented in cleaning product ads? Well, this advertisement comes close. When I was in Israel recently, I saw billboards for Knorr’s (division of Unilever) New Cheesy Cheddar Pasta that simply read (in Hebrew), “Dad, more!” This might be the first time I’ve ever seen an advertisement that alludes to the man as the consumer of a food product for children instead of the woman.
I spoke to Yael Ben-Zvi, the Marketing Manager at Unilever, about how this campaign came about. She told me that the original ad was supposed to read, “Mom, more!” But people in the office took issue with it a few days before it was slated to run (one of the people in the department made the point that some kids don’t have moms), so the marketing department included, “Dad, more!” in the campaign as well.
“Why not combine ‘Mom, more!’ and ‘Dad, more!’?” Ben-Zvi said. “It will make the campaign more solvent.”
But she also explained that the main target is still women. “More women are doing the daily cooking, not only in Israel, but also in the rest of the world,” she said. Some countries wouldn’t go for an ad that implies that the man should cook, but “in Israel it’s reasonable.” Market research revealed that women in Israel and Turkey expect men to be involved in the cooking process.
Perhaps more optimistically, the marketing department killed a TV spot in which a busy dad comes home from work and is lured into the kitchen by the scent of his wife’s soup. According to Ben-Zvi, “[Female] focus groups didn’t like it at all.” Looks like Israeli marketing departments are leading the way in depicting contemporary caretaker roles.
