"I just started bleeding & I feel fantastic!" Typical image used for feminine hygiene products.
JWT’s latest campaign for Kotex works for all the reasons the media have spelled out. But for many women it will work simply because it was created by women, and therefore makes sense. It’s not that the ads are even that hilarious – JWT could have pushed the humor further – but the campaign is market focused, clever, relevant and fresh.
In the close to 33 years of my mensturating life, advertising agencies have strangely rationalized that clients selling tampons and pads – conservatively categorized as ‘personal hygiene’ products – would do just as well to be communicated by the half of the population who don’t buy (or rarely) buy these products, who don’t use them and wouldn’t know how to put one up ‘there’, who actually don’t have vaginas and who probably wouldn’t know how to take the packaging off either a tampon or pad if asked. Advertising execs are a strangle lot indeed!
Tampon and menstral pad advertising has, up until now, been pretty much dreamed up to suit male fantasies or could it be just plain stupidity – it’s not clear which.
Kotex U: old print ad
Gone are those bleedin’ days when we women should feel we are fabulously feminine which actually = getting onto the third day with four to go – bloated, cramping and craving chocolate; OR that our hormones should be stable which actually = “I’m going to kill the kids and ask for a divorce tomorrow, I can’t live like this anymore”; OR that the wind in our hair and our flowing white gown trailing behind us in real life means - “My roots are growing out and I can’t fit into the cocktail dress for Friday’s awards night”, all the while we’re straddled on a handsome black stallion with stretches of warm sand tempting perfect intimacy, comfort and happiness which = “No, I’m not up for it, how could you possibly think I would be? I just really need to sleep.”
So, hats off to Kotex for moving on. I can now relate to Kotex as a brand. It speaks to me, it has a sense of humor, it understands my experience and it can provide me with a decent product when I need it. What more could a girl need?
Maybe Kotex should be the new generic word for tampon from now on. I know I’m going to start using it.
If you haven’t seen the TV spot yet, follow the link below -
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