Inspiring the business
Bodyform’s journey in taboo-breaking promoting began in 2017 with “Blood Normal,” when it grew to become the primary U.Okay. model to depict actual menstrual blood as an alternative of the blue liquid that usually represented it in commercials.
Since then, the model and AMV BBDO have gone on to create a joyful ode to vulvas with 2018’s “Viva la Vulva;” which depicts the highs and lows of residing with a womb in 2020’s “Womb Stories; raising awareness of women’s pain in 2021’s “Pain Stories;” and highlighted the gender sleep hole in 2022’s “#Periodsomnia.”
Bodyform gained fame and awards for these campaigns, spawning a wave of copycat advertisers who equally claimed to smash taboos about ladies.
Nevertheless, for the Essity model, “our strategy and purpose is not to break taboos. The whole point is to leave women+ [inclusive of different identities pertaining to gender] ”feeling understood,” Revol stated.
“This is more about an ambition to tell the whole truth,” she continued. “If it means other brands will try to copy that and will listen and understand women+ better, that’s only a good thing for women+ and embeds good practices in the industry.”
The technique can also be paying off for Essity’s enterprise. Earlier than this sequence of adverts, “we were really struggling with the business worldwide,” Azevedo Lara stated.
Within the years since, Bodyform / Libresse has grow to be the fastest-growing femcare model, in keeping with 2024 knowledge from NielsenIQ, Circana and Kantar. It’s a $1 billion web gross sales enterprise, Azevedo Lara stated.
“Our purpose has inspired everything from our communications to our approach to product innovation, which has put us in a much better position,” she stated. “We can communicate persuasively that we are the right choice for consumers, but the numbers only give us more argument to continue our journey.”