Americans like to think we're still the dominant influence when it comes to brand marketing, but one of today's best examples of innovative, boundary-pushing creativity barely has a presence here...yet.
Essity, a global family of feminine product brands that includes Bodyform and Libresse, has been putting on a clinic in recent years about how to modernize marketing aimed at women. The work is blunt, confrontational, unapologetic and, best of all, perfectly crafted.
With work like #BloodNormal (winner of the Cannes Glass Lion) and Viva La Vulva (one of my favorite ads of 2018), Essity and agency AMV BBDO showed how a marketer could advance a cultural conversation that's been riddled by taboos for literal millennia.
In a fascinating article today, available exclusively to Adweek Pro members, my colleague Kathryn Lundstrom talks to the brand and agency about their journey to challenge stigmas and rewrite the playbook for period marketing.
(If you want to learn even more, you can check out my 2019 podcast interview with Essity's marketing leaders when I sat down with them at the D&AD festival in London.)
It's a vital topic not only for brands who want to evolve the way they appeal to women, but to all brands who quietly reinforce outdated taboos through what they do and don't say in advertising. Every marketer is guilty of this on some level, and anyone who's tried to challenge tradition has learned the hard way that it's one of the hardest things to accomplish in this industry.
But it's a challenge worth taking up, and one with tremendous rewards on the other side for marketers who succeed.
David Griner
Creative and Innovation Editor, Adweek
David.Griner@Adweek.com
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