Essity is still fighting the good fight against period advertising taboos

“I remember the team came back with the first ad where we showed a real period pad and a woman putting it in her underwear. It made headlines because it hadn’t been done before, which is insane,” she says.

That marked a pivotal moment and set Grubner on a course to establish its purpose as a taboo-busting company that unflinchingly reflected the reality of a woman’s monthly cycle.

This was no easy brief to sell into an agency. It hired AMV BBDO to lead the charge.

Nicholas Hulley, chief creative officer at AMV BBDO, admits “people were jumping under their desks” to avoid working on a period campaign. His creative partner Nadja Lossgot was the only female CD at the time and the new business team made a beeline for them during the pitch. “We were like, ‘Screw that, we won’t do it. Why should it be us?’ So, even we had that sense that we didn’t want to do it. And then we saw the brief, we saw what the ambition was, and we were like, ‘Yeah, we’ll have a go,’” he says.

Despite that initial hesitancy, Essity has been a client that has pushed the agency more than any other. It has forced its teams to question government policy and legislation, actively court controversy and demand change in the media industry.

When it launched ‘Bloodnormal’ for Bodyform in the UK (and Libresse globally), it was the first time visual blood had been shown in an ad for a period product. It was not allowed to run on TV in the UK or France, while showing it online required months of tough negotiation with platforms.

Hulley reveals that the pushback was so intense that some agency staff had their jobs threatened and faced relentless criticism from media owners and platforms.

If you thought this would be enough to deter Essity and AMV from bold campaigns, you’d be wrong. It followed it up with ‘Viva La Vulva,’ a joyous ad that celebrated the diversity of vulvas as it urged women to love their vagina no matter what it looks like.

Then came ‘Womb Stories,’ a campaign applauded for beautifully, and accurately, showing the experience of women when it comes to everything from childbirth and the menopause to the pain of endometriosis.

Grubner says that it still receives criticism for its unapologetic approach to marketing its brands. You only have to look at some recent headlines to understand her point. Last month, The Telegraph proclaimed it was time to stop talking about periods. Last week, The Spectator criticized the “disturbing tendency among women to overshare about their menstrual cycles” after supermodel Brooks Nader posted a video of her blood-stained white skirt at Wimbledon. But the marketer refuses to bow to pressure.

“When we started, the entire category [thought] periods were taboo. It was very shameful. ‘You bleed shameful blood and here is a very functional, absorbing product that’s taking care of your shameful blood. Now, please go out and feel confident,’” she says. “And I think back to when we realized that it shouldn’t be women who had to change their attitude. The world was completely upside down and we needed to change it. And our brands found their power because we started to act fearlessly and walk the talk.”

In recent years, it has partnered with McKinsey and taken a co-authored Women’s Health Gap Report to the World Economic Forum in Davos to raise awareness of the issue among political and business leaders. It issued a white paper outlining policy changes that would close the menstrual health gap. It’s forged partnerships with the United Nations Foundation and Unicef to push this agenda globally. To date, it says it’s educated somewhere in the region of 45 million school children on women’s health issues.

At a time when “purpose marketing” is under a critical spotlight, when investors and shareholders are questioning why a brand has to stand for something, you only have to look at how a commitment to destigmatize period care has changed the fortunes of Essity.

“When we started, we were the sixth biggest period brand in the world. The number one and the number two were considerably bigger,” Grubner says.

“We doubled our size, so from €600m to a €1.1bn brand, and we’re now number four. We’re not done yet. There are three more ahead of us and it’s not a matter of if, but when, because we’ve been the fastest-growing period brand in the world year-on-year. We always say that empathy is igniting that growth.”

But more than that, it has changed the attitudes of women. When it started, 90% of women were hiding their period out of shame. Today, that figure is 24%. “We haven’t done that alone, but I think we have started a lot of conversations,” Grubner continues.

Despite the wins it has delivered at a business level, she says Essity has not been immune to the economic pressures facing the industry and today it is fighting this good fight with an ever-tighter budget.

“We are outspent by competitors, often 10 times,” she says. “Everyone is facing [the same challenges], so production budgets are cut. They’ve reduced by double digits.

“We also know that campaigns need to wear in, that there is no wear out, which means we want to run them for longer and be as consistent as possible. But because of what we stand for, there is this top-notch talent that wants to work with us.”

The fight goes on

Earlier this year, Essity commissioned a study of 4,000 people into how social platforms treat content around women’s menstrual and sexual health. The short of it is, they restrict, decategorize or hide posts on subjects such as periods, menopause, incontinence and erectile dysfunction even when they use correct anatomical terms. And this is a huge problem when nearly 75% of 18-35 year olds turn to social media to educate themselves about male and female health.

Bodyform’s advertising on popular social media platforms has been frequently held back after triggering automated censorship for simply using words such as ‘period' or ‘vagina.’

“We’re still continuing to fight bans,” says Grubner (you can hear more on this issue on The Drum’s podcast). “In the UK, there are more than 40 firms being filtered with AI and algorithms and we’ve been calling that out.”

Last month, Essity’s public affairs team in the UK penned a letter to all social media owners to highlight the damage this is doing to raising awareness and educating people about women’s health. “We want to talk about it,” she said of what the letter contained. “We wrote, ‘Can we please sit at the table and review those policies?’ And AI obviously is a hot topic, because it’s disrupting everything. But the bias is even worse in the artificial world. I don’t know how many women are in the room and leading that, but we need to be very careful so that this world isn’t even worse and more stereotyped than the reality we live in,” she says. Essity is a founding partner of AI Innovation of Sweden, a center for research into the technology.

In September, Essity will launch its next major campaign to move the dial. Grubner doesn’t give much away, other than to say it’s for the Bodyform Ultimate range and will address the issue of heavy flow periods. “The majority of women with super heavy periods actually do not have a product that is meeting their needs. So they use several products and are building their own things. Now we have our own, called Maximum Absorbs, and that launch will be supported with a global campaign.

“Our mission is to create a world free from taboos. And there are still 24% of women who feel ashamed of their period, so the direction is very clear. We will not stop until we reach those 24%. We’re not backing down and we’re getting more powerful.”