The Minipreço activation campaign, "The Price of Reality," created in partnership with the agency NOSSA, addresses the issue of the disparity between men's and women's salaries in Portugal through a guerrilla marketing campaign. This involves installing posters in stores that show all products with a 14% price increase, the average value corresponding to the gender pay gap, but only affecting men.
The goal is to impact the audience, which is primarily male, and raise awareness of this issue on International Women's Day.
Women earn less than men (wage gap between men and women in Portugal, in 2021, data from the CIG - Commission for Citizenship and Gender Equality), with the difference being around 14% (for equal work). As the level of education and qualification increases, the wage gap between men and women widens, clearly disadvantaging women.
Raising awareness of the issue
Raising awareness of this issue involved developing an action, in partnership with the creative agency NOSSA, that surprised men who went to Minipreço to shop, making them realize the 14% increase in their products, but also the real cost that the items represent for women. This action would not have practical effects, since the price increase would not be applied at the time of purchase, the objective being only to impact the customer and lead them to reflect on this issue of gender pay disparity. The consumers' reactions were captured and compiled into a video showing the result of this activation.
Ricardo Torres Assunção, Marketing and Communications Director at DIA Portugal, states that “this campaign, 'The Price of Reality,' aims to address, in a disruptive way, the wage gap between men and women that exists in several countries and has been increasing over the years. We want to show, especially to men, the reality of a woman going shopping and reveal, in a perceptible way, the comparison between the effort made by men and women to acquire a product . ”
