Summary

Indian grocery brands’ competitive moat is distribution. And discounting. Not creative communication. Even the largest players advertise to ‘the woman of the house’. But during the lockdown, men spent more time in the house… and the kitchen — which resulted in a behaviour shift we leveraged to make kitchens equal. Allowing Swiggy Instamart to unlock a new vertical and piloting a new narrative to raise awareness & ultimately, gain market share.

Awards

Cannes Lion: 1 Bronze Lion (Creative E-commerce)

Insight

Discourse around gender roles in India are expanding into areas such as parenting, career decisions, and housework. While men’s attitudes can be molded around parenting and career decisions, their ability to contribute to chores hasn’t. With increasing workloads during the pandemic, lines for housework were blurred. Men slowly learned to mop houses, buy the right pulses, and even wash their own dirty laundry. 

During this time, the cultural norms of the lack of men’s participation was being challenged, and Swiggy Instamart cemented it for a chore which women do 88% more of: cooking.

Creative Idea & Execution

Instead of another story about why equality mattered, Instamart gave couples a new tool to experience a feminist kitchen: feminist recipes.With the belief that feminist recipes are simply equal recipes, we challenged the 1600-year-old assumption that recipes are written for one person to do all the cooking. 

The Better Half Recipes hit the internet by hijacking YouTube comments of 70 of India’s most watched chefs. Turning over 160 trending recipes feminist, by leaving comments (with timestamps) to split recipes equally, available in a ‘The Better Half Playlist’. Just like searching for recipe variations, partners could now search for better half versions to split the effort. 

For couples who prefer ‘listening,’ the first-ever ‘earpod innovation’ on Spotify. ‘The Better Half Podcast’ featured real-time audio instructions for recipes- split in half, for each earpod. A physical copy of the book was sent across the country as a trial-generator.