Blog of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research
This Kotex advertisement appeared in the September, 2011, issue of Ebony magazine.
Slip on stilettos and zip up those skinny jeans. Because there’s nothing so comfortable to a menstruating woman as skin-tight pants, right? At least they’re not white pants.
It is interesting that for one line of products, Kotex is mocking the usual tropes of femcare ads, while deploying those very same clichés for their other line.
Remember back in February when I made fun of Tampax for explicitly comparing their Tampax Pearl to U by Kotex in their newest print ads? Such direct comparison to the competitor’s product is not a trendy marketing strategy; it hearkens back to the days when Darrin Stephens was a copywriter. (You young-uns can look up that reference.)
I wasn’t the only one who noticed: a recent article in Ad Age says the “30% better protection” strategy has not been used in femcare marketing since Rely tampons were withdrawn from the market in 1980. Not coincidentally, that was the last time Tampax picked up significant market share — a lot of those former Rely users switched to Tampax (Tampax was not owned by P&G at the time, but Rely was).
With the U by Kotex brand apparently winning new customers as well as winning others away from Tampax, how successful will “30% better protection” be as a persuasive strategy? Jack Neff (author of the Ad Age piece) points out that it’s pretty challenging “in a category where absorbency has been tightly regulated by the Food and Drug Administration in the wake of the Rely withdrawal.”
Editor’s note, August 10, 2011: Procter & Gamble has responded that this video was NOT produced or commissioned by them, and is in fact a spoof. While it is still offensive and worthy of criticism as such and your comments are welcome here, please do not direct your ire toward Procter & Gamble.
Edited again, August 10, 2011: I’m beginning to doubt the veracity of the unsigned P&G claim that the company is unaffiliated with this video. The same anonymous quote, attributed only to “Procter & Gamble”, is starting to show up in nearly every online discussion of this ad — at least in discussion of how offensive and un-funny it is. I’ve traced the video back to the Ads of the World site, which provides the following credits:
Advertising Agency: Leo Burnett, London, UK
Creative: Jim Thornton
Director: Ben Jones
Production Company: Helimax Films
DoP: George Steel
Producer: Sherry Collins
I note that P&G has not posted their denial at Ads of the World, or at Jezebel – two blogs with *considerably* larger audiences than re:Cycling. Color me suspicious. I’d like to hear what others think.
Final edit, August 11, 2011: Many thanks to blogger Jane Fae, who phoned both P&G office and Leo Burnett UK, and received the following statement from a senior representative at Leo Burnett:
“All creative agencies will look at different creative ideas to push boundaries and engage consumers. We will occasionally make test films to try and bring an idea to life without a request from the client. These films are for internal use only, for us to understand the power of an idea and are not for publication. This creative was never commissioned nor approved by P&G. We regret this has been made public without our approval or authorization and apologise for any offence caused.”
Procter & Gamble have finally responded to consumer complaints about their patronizing “Have a Happy Period” slogan, with a disturbing video showcasing what they term “some of East London’s finest transvestites”. This is so many kinds of wrong, starting with the conflation of transsexuality and drag performance. But instead of re-inventing the wheel and taking it apart myself, I’m going to re-direct re:Cycling readers to the excellent analysis Shakesville’s EastSideKate did yesterday.
I pulled this P&G contact information and sample letter from commenter “Teaspoon” over there:
Toll-free phone number in the U.S. (Always brand specific): (800) 888-3115
Web form for U.S. contact: http://pg.custhelp.com/app/ask
A sample letter that anyone may feel free to adopt or adapt as they like:
Dear P&G representative:
I was recently directed to a web video ad for your Always brand products intended for airing in England and possibly wider audiences, featuring London “drag queens” in tears over an ostensible inability to menstruate. Quite aside from the errors inherent with conflating cross-dressing performance with transsexuality, this sort of advertising is cruel to transwomen who do feel incomplete, and it helps create a hostile situation for transsexual individuals. These individuals already face a greater risk of violence simply for being who they are, and your advertising promotes further dehumanization of those who are different.
As a long-time loyal purchaser of Always brand products, I am dismayed by such mocking and harmful advertising. Until the ad is pulled and a public apology that acknowledges the harmful nature of the ad is issued, I will no longer purchase Always brand products, and I will be reviewing my other purchases to avoid other Proctor and Gamble products as well.
Sincerely,
A former customer
Kotex still wants us to “break the cycle“. But every time I see these ads, I think of Chella Quint‘s message to Kotex: We’re only gonna stop feeling the shame when we take ownership of our periods. And we’re taking it back from you, dude. So you can’t reclaim our periods for us. You’re some of the people we’re reclaiming them from. Got it?
In the late 1920s, at the peak of the Flapper Era, a series of Kotex ads made extravagant use of images of attractive young women in couture outfits in sophisticated settings. The most intriguing and subtle ad in the series was published in 1929. It shows two slender young women lounging on the deck of an ocean liner dressed for the evening’s shipboard festivities. The way we know that they are aboard a liner is the presence of a life preserver attached to the railing beside them. The name of the ship is printed in large letters upon the device. They are aboard The Nepenthe.
This is an extraordinary detail, perhaps penned by an English major turned copy writer who remembered fondly Edgar Allen Poe’s well known and often taught “The Raven.” Poe’s poem, the tale of a grief stricken man unable to overcome the loss of his dead lover, pleads with the stolid, unflinching raven for “surcease of sorrow,” some balm or drug to slake his misery, such as the mythic potion alluded to in Homer’s Odyssey and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queen: the mysterious elixir, nepenthe, the drug that banishes sorrow by making the user forget his woes, the antidepressant of the ancients. The narrator implores the raven,
“Wretch,” I cried, “thy God hath lent thee–by these angels he hath sent thee
Respite–respite and nepenthe from thy memories of Lenore!
Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe and forget this lost Lenore!”
Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”
The young women in the ad have set sail on the good ship Kotex Nepenthe, the miracle conveyance that will carry them away from conscious need to worry or grieve over the burden of their menstruating bodies.
What does it mean to board the Kotex Nepenthe? What port is being left behind? Where have the women set sail for? The ad copy provides three answers. First, as the headline and the first sentence of the text assert, one can advance one’s class: “Why 9 out of 10 smart women instinctively prefer this new sanitary protection,” states the headline, and the copy adds, “It is easy to see why the use of Kotex has become a habit among women who set the standard of good taste.” Furthermore, as one “smart matron,” puts it, “Now I wouldn’t go back to the old way. This is so much more civilized-how did we ever get along without it?” By implication, women who continue to use old rags are of a primitive nature. And note the use of the phrase “Kotex has become a habit,” an apt coinage for a drug-use metaphor.
Second, as the photo illustration and the copy confirm, a Kotex user can feel young and glamorous: “For such women have young ideas, young minds.”
Third, and most significant, Kotex can help one hide the olfactory and visible signs of one’s very gender: the scent of menses and the sight of a pad beneath one’s dress: “ROUNDED, TAPERED CORNERS – make for inconspicuous protection,” and “DEODORIZES. . . safely, thoroughly, by a patented process.” [caps in original]
The ad embodies the major theme that runs through nearly a century of advertising, that one can pass through the decades of one’s menstrual life as one who does not menstruate. The difference is that rather than using a drug metaphor to claim you can make the period disappear, now, thanks to the pharmaceutical industry, we’ve got the real thing.
It looks like Kotex is winning. Explicit comparison to the competitor’s product is an advertising strategy of 30-40 years ago. Under the new rules, the competitor’s product doesn’t even exist, and certainly isn’t deserving of mention in a promotion for your own.
This ad for Tampax appeared in the March, 2011, issue of Marie Claire
Last spring, Kotex introduced U by Kotex, a.k.a. You Buy Kotex, small tampons with bright neon applicators and a forward-thinking “Break the Cycle” advertising campaign announcing that Tampon Ads Are Ridiculous. Apparently tampon ads are STILL ridiculous. Here’s the new installment, developed by New York ad agency Ogilvy:
In the spirit of Ms. magazine’s long-standing “No Comment” feature, I share without comment this e-card forwarded to me by a student:
In my visual communication class this week, I used several femcare ads (along with a couple of cell phone commercials and other images) to illustrate Althusser’s concept of interpellation. My students got more of a lesson than they bargained for, as I ended up also talking a little about the history of advertising for femcare products. I mentioned but did not show this historically significant ad, notable to my students for the appearance of pre-Friends Courtney Cox, but more important because it was the first time the word “period” was uttered on television in a menstrual product ad.
It aired in 1985.
Like Sheldon says, you could save a lot of money if you buy tampons in bulk. Lots of women are probably wishing they’d bought o.b. tampons in bulk, now that they’re going for $20 a box on ebay.
One of my students just sent me this. I don’t think it’s recent — and it may even be a fake — but I’d never seen it before.
I like it, even though the liquid is blue.
Poor Mother Nature. Defeated again.
In saying “Paper wins”, do you think this ad is intended to criticize cloth pads and menstrual cups?
Magazine ad for Tampax Pearl, October 2010
