Flipkart and Dentsu Webchutney drive new campaign for gender equality among children

It’s fair to say in today’s times, all of us believe in gender-equality. But how many of us realise that the idea of equality matters not just for us as adults- but to children too? Our dated ideas of gender roles start right from the time we assume our niece might prefer a doll over a car as a birthday gift without knowing for sure, or how we think it’s ok to tell our sons that being sensitive is unmanly. How we keep our children’s experiences and expectations about life and their personalities separated right from their childhood, offering them just half of what life has in store.

Well, the new generation of toddlers, tweens and those in between… with a little help from Flipkart and Dentsu Webchutney are here to tell us how they’d like to be raised. They even have a name for themselves, like Gen-X and Gen-Y; this new generation calls itself #GenerationEqual, or “Gen-E”!

“Look around you. Do you have a son, daughter, niece, nephew, or a friend’s child born a few years after the millennium? They are all part of #GenerationEqual. Real change will happen when we collectively decide to make the same rules that influence their lives. And as far as we can, let’s keep those rules the same for both boys and girls. That is the most real way to ensure our biases doesn’t pass on to them,” says Prashant Gopalakrishnan, Sr.Vice-President, Client Services, Dentsu Webchutney.

“As parents in 2018, we’d like to be progressive in letting our child choose for themselves in several aspects, so that they get to do what they love. Let the child experience the hobbies, passions, interests, and personality traits that come naturally to them… whether it’s a boy who wants to learn cooking, or a girl passionate about collecting superhero toys. And the other way around too,” says Apuarv Sethi, Director – Brand Marketing  at Flipkart. Gen-E is an Indian brand’s biggest investment on the subject of gender-equality among children so far. And Flipkart’s third campaign to echo their new brand promise of ‘partnering with the progressive Indian’ via ‘Naye India ke saath’. Like the previous two installments, the brand’s role in it is admirably humble: and the brand is in fact used in the most surprising ways…

Flipkart boxes appear ‘fly on the wall’ style- barely visible in corners of the screen, brought alive through bubble-wrap, and in one scene: even made into an adorable toy for a child.

In just a year of having started the new brand charter, Flipkart has campaigned on three distinctly different social subjects. With Penguin Dad, they celebrated fathers involved in child- raising; with Choose Your Age, they celebrated those defeating age with experiences; and now with Gen-E: they’re almost asking us to be what our children need us to, so that more and more of us can be celebrated. A new generation is waiting to be raised without gender-bias. The ball’s simply in our court.