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Dove Men+Care Challenges Canada to Take the Time on Paternity Leave
Dove Men+Care's #TakeTheTime campaign is a 2019 Canadian documentary-style content initiative, created by Ogilvy Canada, that followed five real fathers across five weeks of parental leave to challenge the cultural stigma surrounding male caregiving and paternity leave.
The campaign launched on March 17, 2019, in Canada, timed precisely to coincide with the introduction of new federal legislation providing five weeks of "use-it-or-lose-it" parental leave for non-birthing parents. The timing was deliberate and strategic: by anchoring the campaign to a genuine policy moment, Dove Men+Care positioned itself at the intersection of legislation and cultural change rather than merely occupying an emotional advertising space. A six-minute documentary film, released on May 1, 2019, formed the centrepiece of the campaign, offering an intimate portrait of fatherhood that ran counter to traditional masculine archetypes common in health and beauty advertising.
Media was handled by Mindshare Canada, with public relations managed by Edelman Canada, as reported by Ads of the World. The collaboration between Ogilvy Canada, Mindshare, and Edelman gave the campaign reach across earned, owned, and paid channels in the Canadian market. Leslie Golts, marketing lead at Unilever for the Dove Brand and Skin Cleansing Category, stated at launch that "with Canada's new parental leave policies, we think it's an important moment to encourage Canadians to take the time to change the conversation around parental leave," as published in Campaign Canada on May 1, 2019. Clapboard has assigned the #TakeTheTime campaign a score of 70 out of 100, reflecting strong cultural relevance and craft against a moderately documented impact record.
Dove Men+Care identified a specific legislative moment in Canada as its strategic entry point. The federal government's introduction of a five-week use-it-or-lose-it parental leave benefit for non-birthing parents created a culturally charged context in which the brand could credibly advocate for behavioural change among Canadian fathers, rather than simply selling a grooming product.
The strategic logic rested on a well-established tension within Canadian society: despite legislative progress, stigma around men taking parental leave remained persistent. Leslie Golts of Unilever acknowledged this directly, noting that "while the image of fatherhood is evolving, there's still a lot of work to do to make paternity leave stigmas a thing of the past," as quoted in Campaign Canada. Dove Men+Care, described in case study documentation as Unilever's fastest-growing men's personal-care brand at the time, per Clapboard's editorial research, had strategic equity in the fatherhood space that its primary competitor, Procter and Gamble's portfolio of men's grooming brands including Gillette, had not occupied with equivalent depth in the Canadian market. According to Mintel analysis cited by Scribd, Procter and Gamble and Unilever together account for approximately 62% of men's personal-care sales globally, making any differentiation within that duopoly a meaningful competitive act.
The campaign extended a lineage that Dove Men+Care had been building since at least 2016, when the "My Dad, My Hero" campaign portrayed real fathers in physically demanding moments with their children, as documented by thecreativesroom.com and Ads of the World. In Canada in 2019, #TakeTheTime deepened that platform by moving from aspirational imagery to direct policy advocacy, using the documentary format to ground emotional storytelling in observable, verifiable behaviour. The male parenting insight was not invented for the campaign; it was amplified precisely because a legislative opening made it actionable for Canadian audiences.
Director Tamir Moscovici helmed the six-minute documentary film at the heart of the #TakeTheTime campaign, as credited by thecreativesroom.com. The choice of a documentary format over scripted narrative was itself a creative argument: the campaign's credibility depended on the authenticity of the fathers shown, and Moscovici's approach allowed the intimacy of real caregiving moments to carry the emotional weight that a produced commercial could not.
Brian Murray, chief creative officer at Ogilvy, was credited on the campaign, as reported by mediapost.com and thecreativesroom.com. Under Murray's creative leadership, Ogilvy Canada constructed a content piece that functioned simultaneously as advertising, editorial content, and a public-health-adjacent advocacy document. The film followed five distinct fathers across five consecutive weeks of parental leave in Canada, capturing both the mundane and the transformative aspects of male caregiving. This structure gave the film a longitudinal quality unusual in beauty and health advertising, treating fatherhood as a process rather than a photogenic moment.
The production approach continued a creative philosophy Dove Men+Care had applied in its 2016 work, where real fathers rather than idealised or celebrity protagonists were placed at the centre of the frame, as documented by Ads of the World and thecreativesroom.com. In #TakeTheTime, that principle was extended further: the fathers were not performing for an audience but being observed, and the film's rhythm reflected the unhurried pace of leave itself. The campaign comprised a single media asset, concentrating creative investment into one carefully crafted film rather than dispersing it across formats, which reinforced the content's sense of purpose and restraint. In the Canadian market, where documentary storytelling has a strong cultural tradition, this formal choice aligned the brand with credible non-commercial modes of communication.
Dove Men+Care's #TakeTheTime campaign earned several independently verified industry recognitions following its 2019 release in Canada. The campaign won the Grand Prix at Crafting Brands for Life, as reported by guilhermerech.com. It also won Gold for Brand Building and Silver for Engagement at the Canadian Marketing Awards 2019, as documented by thecreativesroom.com. In the United States, the campaign received an OMMA Award for Online Advertising Creativity in 2019, as reported by mediapost.com.
No verified audience reach, view count, or brand-lift figures for #TakeTheTime are publicly available at the time of publication. The campaign's structural effectiveness, however, is evident in its awards profile: recognition across both craft-focused juries such as Crafting Brands for Life and performance-oriented bodies such as the Canadian Marketing Awards indicates that the work was judged to have succeeded on both creative and commercial dimensions within the Canadian market. The campaign's concentration on a single six-minute film made measurable resonance with any individual viewer high, even if total reach was narrower than a multi-format campaign. The combination of Mindshare Canada's media placement and Edelman Canada's public relations work, as reported by Ads of the World, would have extended the film's distribution beyond paid channels into earned media, a model that historically amplifies documentary-format brand content in Canada's media environment. The paternity leave subject matter also generated inherent news value at a moment when the federal parental leave legislation was actively in public discourse, giving the campaign organic contextual relevance that no media budget alone can manufacture.
Dove Men+Care's #TakeTheTime is a 2019 Canadian campaign created by Ogilvy Canada that documented five real fathers taking parental leave over five weeks. It launched on March 17, 2019, aligned with new Canadian federal legislation providing five weeks of use-it-or-lose-it leave for non-birthing parents, challenging stigma around male caregiving.
Director Tamir Moscovici directed the six-minute documentary film at the centre of the #TakeTheTime campaign, as credited by thecreativesroom.com. Brian Murray served as chief creative officer at Ogilvy Canada on the campaign. Mindshare Canada handled media and Edelman Canada managed public relations, as reported by Ads of the World.
#TakeTheTime won the Grand Prix at Crafting Brands for Life and Gold for Brand Building at the Canadian Marketing Awards 2019, as reported by guilhermerech.com and thecreativesroom.com respectively. It also received Silver for Engagement at the Canadian Marketing Awards and an OMMA Award for Online Advertising Creativity, as documented by mediapost.com.
Dove Men+Care launched #TakeTheTime in Canada to coincide with new federal legislation creating five weeks of use-it-or-lose-it parental leave for non-birthing parents. Leslie Golts of Unilever stated the brand saw it as a critical moment to challenge paternity leave stigma, as published in Campaign Canada on May 1, 2019.
Dove Men+Care has built a long-running platform around fatherhood and emotional openness. The 2016 campaign My Dad My Hero used real fathers in authentic moments, as documented by Ads of the World. #TakeTheTime deepened that approach by connecting real fathers' caregiving experiences directly to Canadian parental leave legislation and policy advocacy.
#TakeTheTime comprised a single six-minute documentary-style film released on May 1, 2019, as reported by mediapost.com. The film followed five Canadian fathers across five weeks of parental leave. Concentrating creative investment into one film reinforced the campaign's sense of purpose and aligned it with Canada's strong documentary storytelling tradition.
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