Feminine Hygiene Commercials Are Rarely Genius

Over on AdAge, there's a commercial for a company called Libra. In the spot, a woman on a rooftop rocks out on guitar as video game shapes fall from the sky. The licks are hot, the chick is cool, and the tagline is: "Play with patterns." The product? Tampons. Because having your period rocks! Actually, the ad's not bad — at least there's not blue mystery liquid being squeezed from an eyedropper or a beaver involved. As AdAge's Charlie Moran points out: "We like rock 'n roll as a source of female empowerment, but doesn't such a contrived packaging gimmick like this play into stereotypes about the frivolity of those same young girls?" Ugh. Why is "feminine hygiene" such a tough product to sell? Women menstruate. They need tampons. So how come tampon commercials rarely hit the mark?

As Tracie wrote in her post about period dramas, blood makes people uncomfortable. TV commercials are gleaming, clean shiny things where no one bleeds or poops (ever see the All-Bran commercial where bricks stand in for crap?) Especially not women. The new Tampax commercials feature "Mother Nature" giving a woman her "monthly gift," which is a red present. Not bloody jelly blobs coming from her uterus, but a neatly wrapped box that might as well have a cashmere sweater inside. I'm not saying that I want to see blood in tampon commercials. I don't know what I want to see. And it seems like the ad execs don't know either. When it comes to period ads, what would you like to see? Have there ever been any ads that you thought were well done?

The Libra commercial:

A Touch of Feminine Hygenius [AdAge]
Earlier: The Importance Of Being Able To Change Your Period Products In "Public"
Leave It To Beaver

Send an email to Dodai, the author of this post, at dodai@jezebel.com.

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