Little red ‘period people’ replace blue liquid and women-only in new Sofy campaign
Nearly a year after feminine hygiene company, Unicharm, attracted headlines for fat-shaming, the company has launched a new attention-grabbing campaign featuring little red ‘period people’ trapped inside a feminine hygiene pads.
The ‘product demonstration’ campaign by J. Walter Thompson in Melbourne, features a group of people in red suits ‘trapped’ inside a padded room, showing how Sofy pads draw the period away from the surface of the pad, making them more comfortable for women.
A series of 15-second digital pre-roll ads are named as different demonstration numbers and then allow people to click through to get a free sample.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzK7TGhtwMQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4MNzkr8Eq3M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ILbGpWGgIE
Last year the company attracted attention due to an advertisement that featured a thin woman whose period was embodied in the form of an angry fat woman.
The ad drew extensive criticism for managing to shame fat people and women in general in one ad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xKdN3G4VyoM
The new campaign takes a tack rarely adopted in the sector in using the colour red. JWT strategic planner Celeste Whitelaw said the company needed to do something different to stand out.
Sofy senior brand manager, Debra Smith, said it was a challenge to demonstrate the benefits of the new design.
“In isolation it’s not messaging that our audience are going to lean into; we needed to give them a reason to listen,” Smith said.
Credits:
- Client: Unicharm
- Senior Brand Manager: Debra Smith
- Agency: J Walter Thompson Melbourne
- Executive Creative Director: Kieran Antill
- Creative Director: Tim Holmes
- Associate Creative Director: Jess Lilley
- Art Director: Lucy Logan
- Copywriter: Holly Burgess
- Senior Producer: Christina Dess
- Group Account Director: Sue Collier
- Account Manager: Georgia Pascoe
- Strategic Planner: Celeste Whitelaw
- Production: Exit FIlms
- Director: Christopher Hill
- DOP: Edward Goldner
- Art Director: Jackson Dickie
- Producer: Renae Begent
- Editor: J Walter Thompson – Dave Wade
- Sound: Production Alley – Nic Buchanan
Sometimes, whatever gets people talking about a problem, right? As a woman, I feel it’s odd to use colours *other* than red … are our sensitivities so precious that we can’t be exposed to the idea of blood to sell a product that’s meant to deal with said blood?
I actually think it’s hilarious that some of the ‘period people’ are male! It is ‘men-struation’ after all, and god knows the jokes have done the rounds on that pun for long enough! 😉
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As an old white man, I can well remember the days when condoms, which were called “French Letters,” perhaps in retaliation to the French who called them “Capote Anglaise,” were available only at a chemist’s shop, were always hidden from view, and had been previously wrapped by the chemist, with plain brown or plain green paper.
Sanitary napkins and tampons were also available at chemist’s shops and were similarly hidden from view and wrapped in plain paper; later they were stacked on shelves in both chemists and supermarkets, but were still wrapped in green or brown paper.
Why we later exposed them all, but decided, in the case of sanitary napkins and tampons, to use blue liquid to represent blood, is a mystery; unless, perhaps, they wanted to elevate its status, by expanding the myth of royal blood.
It is just as much a mystery to this old white man, why the current ad uses little men and women dressed in red suits. The simplistic “Bertie Germ boys,” and the “Toilet bowl elves” of old, once used to educate children, are surely out of place for this adult information.
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