I love Terry O’Reilly’s take on advertising and enjoy listening to his program The Age of Persusion on CBC radio whenever I get the opportunity, usually catching it by chance as I did this past Monday morning. This episode, Marketing the Unpleasant, tackles the subject of advertising feminine hygiene and other “delicate” products.
Here’s how the episode is described on the show’s website:
They are the ads that make everyone squirm- consumers, media, and especially ad copywriters; ads for the funeral industry, laxatives, incontinence pads, and the queen mother of unpleasant ad briefs- feminine hygiene products. Terry O’Reilly kicks off the 4th season of The Age of Persuasion with an insider’s look at marketing the unpleasant, from the strange-but-true history of marketing menstruation products, to Wal-Mart’s recent decision to sell caskets and urns online.
Now I don’t appreciate the marketing the unpleasant description as regards advertising menstruation products, (he actually calls the assignment “the Queen Mother of awkward (ad) briefs”) but the show provides some interesting insight into the history of menstrual product advertising. I learned that it was ad legend Arthur Lasker who came up with the idea to bring menstruation education to high schools, which subsequently “led generations of young ladies” to his client’s product – Kotex. Men setting the agenda for what young women learned and thought about menstruation? Just to sell a product? Hey, it’s still happening today. Now we’ve got male doctors setting us up to buy cycle-stopping and other hormonal contraceptives for everything that ails us. If you listen to the show you’ll hear some clips from a 1950’s Disney produced film called Molly Grows Up. The film was written, directed, produced and consulted by men. It will make you either laugh or gag.
I’m not sure how I feel about the coy approach O’Reilly takes to the subject of menstrual product advertising. It is annoying to hear perpetuated the same old themes of embarrassment and discomfort. He also suggests that women are more uncomfortable with these ads than men. If true, maybe it is because menstrual product ad campaigns never quite seem to hit the mark. (Thanks to Society for Menstrual Cycle Research member and re: cycling guest poster David Linton, many of us have seen the broad range of feminine hygiene advertisements developed over the last 100 years. There is much to critique.) One thing that surprised me is that O’Reilly ignored one of the more groundbreaking campaigns he has written about in the past – the Kotex ads with the red dot and the word “period”.
Marketing the Unpleasant is available as streaming audio. My suggestion: listen to the intro, the next bit about an Israeli HIV awareness campaign, then skip forward to the 11:00 minute mark where the feminine hygiene section takes over. See what you think of the piece. Oddly, of the 13 comments posted about this program, only one – from a woman – references the actual show content. (To be truthful, the comments were mostly from people looking for the streaming audio because they missed the first episode.) I hope if you find the time to listen, you’ll add a comment of your own.
Le sigh.
I am so tired of the comparison between menstruation and excrement. O’Reilly considers products for dealing with both to be in the same category, in terms of both how they’re marketed and how he thinks we should talk about them and think about them.
I’m going to say this again: Menstruation and defecation and urination are. Not. The. Same. They’re only comparable on the most superficial level, in that (in Western industrialized societies) they’re both managed in the same room.
did I just read that marketing funeral services is LESS Awkward than advertising a period?!?!?!
um, because doing a job that capitalizes off of death (however necessary) is way more socially acceptable than ovulation that doesn’t end in pregnancy.
WTF?
and not only is it compared to defecation and urination, but it is MORE awkward than either. because being a woman is especially icky.
I think O’Reilly’s core belief about advertising feminine hygiene products needs to be challenged. I actually don’t buy it. I think it’s the advertising guys and gals who think it’s icky, not the buying public. It’s a limiting core belief, just like the one that say parents are too embarrassed to talk to their kids about sex. (My position: they aren’t embarrassed, just uncertain about how to go about it.) I must say, as an O’Reilly fan, I was disappointed by his take on this whole issue.
Please lay down your comments on the cbc website! https://www.cbc.ca/ageofpersuasion/2010/01/_season_premiere_marketing_the.html#comments
posted. though I fear it will be dismissed as radical crazy feminist propaganda. proper women want to hide their periods after all. SIGH…
I hope you don’t think it impolite that I have eavesdropped on your conversation. And I’m really glad you’re having it.
Please let me clarify our view as expressed in our Age of Persuasion episode “Marketing the Unpleasant,” particularly concerning menstruation, and the marketing of menstruation products. I am confident that I can speak for us both when I say this: we do not believe- we have never believed- that menstruation is ‘icky’. Quite the contrary.
And I have no problem with dialogue- private and public- on the subject.
My issue is context. Within a movie or show? Sure. Newspapers and magazine articles? Absolutely. But advertising is different. It’s often terse. The dialogue is one-way. It doesn’t allow some subjects- and products- the dignity they deserve.
The fact is many women and men are uncomfortable with ad-driven dialogue about menstrual products for the same reason they would be loathe to raise the subject at a dinner party, or with passers-by while waiting for the #27 City Bus. Right subject- wrong context.
Some of you do us a disservice by inferring that we lump the subject of menstruation together with digestive functions- or malfunctions. Or that we think the subject is worse than death.
This is neither fair nor true. This show, you’ll remember, was about awkward ad briefs. That this broad category makes for strange bedfellows is one of the peculiarities of the marketing business, whose inner workings we seek to reveal in each of our shows.
I respect that you may not feel ads for menstruation products are awkward. But in fairness to those in my industry who market them, don’t shoot the messengers: I can assure you that such ads are widely regarded with discomfort, even anger and fury, by many of the very women they’re designed to reach.
respectfully yours,
Mike Tennant
Producer, co-writer
The Age of Persuasion
Hi Mike,
Thanks for taking the time to post your comments on our conversation about the show. (For some reason my comment post to Marketing the Unpleasant was not posted.) It’s great to know that you pay attention to the follow-up generated by Age of Persuasion.
I appreciate your position on what the show was about – awkward ad briefs – and I assure you we are not trying to shoot the messenger. This blog is about responding to and discussing the many ways in which menstruation and the menstrual cycle, as topics, find their way into the public domains of entertainment, advertising, news , social commentary, etc. Every person or group who chooses to write or talk about, or explore menstruation, in whatever realm, is adding to the discourse about that subject. The tone taken, the messages sent, the humour aired – all contribute to how the public perceives menstruation and women’s experience of menstruation. Please understand that our experience with the many ways in which menstruation is disparaged, rejected and dismissed is much greater than yours. I saw many echoes of this approach in the AoP piece. But hey, that’s OK. I just happened to be a fan and listener with a keen professional interest in menstruation and menstrual product advertising. I only hope re:cycling’s conversation about your approach to the topic opened up possibilities for fresh thinking in the ad world as it did for me in mine. Here’s a clip from another comment post I made about the new Tampax ad with Serena Williams that we blogged about yesterday. The idea came to me from Marketing the Unpleasant. So thanks for giving me a fresh approach to my thinking.
“In his piece on marketing the unpleasant, Terry O’Reilly talked about “product benefits.” He told the story of how ads for Viagara evolved from an embarrassed man sitting in his doctor’s office afraid to ask about his erectile dysfunction to ads that “promise sex.” Writing ads for ED drugs is now fun because the product benefit you are selling is sex, as compared to writing ads for feminine hygiene products – that’s just “awkward.” The interesting thing is that the product benefits for menstrual products seem to be all over the map: Kotex: “quiet pad wrappers-remarkably rustle-free”, Always: “have a happy period”, Tampax:”stop leaks better”. Then there are the more positive ads that suggest you don’t have to hide your period or that you’re carrying/using tampons,etc. There is the one with the male teacher asking the girl clutching something in her hand if she has enough for everyone in the class, to which she replies something like “for the girls, maybe”; and the Tampax Pearl ads where resourceful women use their tampons to plug the hole in a row boat and the peephole to the women’s washroom in a rowdy music club. It seems the ad execs can’t quite figure out what “product benefit” will resonate most with their audience. Is using Serena for this Tampax Pearl ad an opportunistic grab onto her tennis skirt-tail to capitalize on the notoriety she garnered from her court meltdown at the US open last September? Maybe we need to do some brainstorming about what the product benefits for menstrual products could or should be.”
So Mike, I ask this question: Might those with a vested interest and in-depth knowledge of the subject of menstruation, like we who blog and comment on this site, be able to help advertisers come up with ads that won’t be, as you note, “widely regarded with discomfort, even anger and fury, by many of the very women they’re designed to reach”? Maybe we can help take the “awkward” out of ad briefs for menstrual products.
Hi Laura:
Fun as it is to blame advertisers, they are not the problem, though by following the parade of public opinion, they may help perpetuate it.
No one is more anxious for- or could better profit from- an acceptance of public dialogue about menstruation than marketers. If that could be achieved by something as simple as tweaking ad creative, it would have happened long ago.
Let me stress a point we’ve made many times on our show, and in our book: advertisers cannot change people’s minds. As Terry puts it: advertisers invariably fall in behind the parade of public opinion. They don’t want to be parade marshal.
Can a prevailing attitude change? Sure. It’s happened with attitudes towards smoking and seatbelts and gender equality and environmental stewardship. In all cases advertising and messaging played a role. But in all these cases change happened much more slowly than most would like. (Note that all of these attitude shifts are still works-in-progress- some a century later.)
To answer your question: I don’t think your solution lies in counseling advertisers about their messages. I believe they’re already on your side. What you might do is contact the companies and work with them to grow the public dialogue you’ve begun here. And find ways to chip away a the glacier of old-school views, including those we made sport of in our show.
This blog seems like a great start.
sincerely,
Mike Tennant
Hi Mike,
You’ve made some excellent points. Please know that I am not blaming anyone, least of all advertisers, for the many and varied ways in which menstruation is depicted in any realm. This blog is about presenting, deconstructing, illuminating, challenging, discussing and understanding the many and varied ways in which menstruation and the menstrual cycle are perceived and represented in our culture. My personal goal in contributing my ideas and comments is to raise awareness and prompt fresh thinking, as well as to have my own thinking challenged. You’ve done this for me and, I hope, this blog post and comment conversation have done the same for you.
Cheers, Laura
Mike,
I don’t think anyone is saying that, in the current social climate, advertising menstrual products isn’t awkward. My problem is that menstruation is the “queen mother” of awkwardness. I know that if I have constipation and need something to fix it, I feel much more awkward at the store than if I am on my period, something that happens every month. I think it IS a very (cis) male view that Periods are SO awkward they are deserving of that title.
To say that advertisers fall behind public opinion ignores the cyclical nature of marketing and consumption. If you are a girl, and everyone around you only talks about menstruation in hushed tones, and it is regarded with disgust by boys your own age and by grown men in sitcoms and movies (isn’t it funny how awkward it is for a guy to go buy tampons!) and all the advertisements you see are about making your period discrete, and hiding the smell of it, you adopt those views. Then when your turn to buy period products comes, of course you will buy the ones that hide it and are discrete.
I am of course not really the target audience anymore. Thanks, in part, to conversations about menstruation,I now have no need of buying menstrual products for another 8 years or so (when my diva cup wears out or I need new sea sponges). I used to think my period was gross. I wouldn’t use non-applicator tampons because I might touch it! These views are not formed in a vacuum.
Marketers are only on the side of profit. To say marketers are on “our side” doesn’t make any sense. As you even said, they go where the money is. It is in their interest to keep periods gross, not to make it easier to openly advertise the products. If people were open about it, they would not have to be in a “make it discrete” arms race with scented pads, or odor absorbing pads that come with a wet wipe to keep your vulva clean (not kidding, I bought some in college).
The more that we can be convinced something is wrong with us, the more products we will need to fix it. since marketers want us to buy stuff, they do their job more effectively when they can convince us that we need something that they have.
So I am blaming the advertisers a bit, even if the original post wasn’t. You say we should contact service providers, as you are a provider of a show, are we not doing that? Saying, “hey, this is a normal part of our lives, and its awkward, but not as awkward as not being able to control urination, the wording of this is offensive.” You say that you don’t think that it is worse than death, or the same as defecation and urination and it was not your intent to make it seem that way. At the same time, the phrasing of your description suggests otherwise. I think you should acknowledge that. If that was not your intent, then say something along the lines of, “sorry, we goofed with the wording, we will think more carefully in the future about word order and descriptors so it will not sound like menstruation is the worst thing in the world.”