The Campaign

We took on a stern command that every girl in India had heard at least once in her life from authority figures like teachers, parents, grandparents or even the neighbourhood aunt. That command was ‘Sit Properly’. If proper meant being stiff and uncomfortable, we wanted girls to feel just the opposite. Thus was born ‘Sit Improper’. It was a message led by a product innovation that provided ‘comfort on the skin’, encouraging girls to sit the way they wanted to and not the way in which they had been taught- during their periods, and also every other day.

Execution

• Sit Improper brand film: We started off with a brand film titled ‘Sit Improper’ featuring girls sitting in what society would deem ‘improper’ positions being admonished by an authoritative voice. Their belief? Improper is just more comfortable. • Content pieces with Girliyapa We tied up with Girliyapa to create content pieces that endorsed the idea with product integration. These included: • Class of 2017 - featuring popular Indian influencers such as Bani J, Meghna Kaur, Nidhi Bisht, Srishti Srivastava, Mukti Mohan, Sheeba Chaddha, Sanaya Pithawalla, Rukhsar Rehman and Tia Sebastian • Musical Parody of a popular Bollywood song • What happens in a girls college • How to be a perfect employee o Pushing the hashtag #SitImproper on social media The hashtag #SitImproper was pushed through social influencers across social media. It became popular, with girls starting to post their own pictures in improper sitting positions with the hashtag.

• 118 million units of Whisper were sold during the campaign period. • At 1.7% nationally and 5% in modern retail within just 5 months of launch, Whisper Ultra soft witnessed the fastest ever share growth in a category launch in the last five years. • Whisper garnered a total of 36.6 million views for the campaign, a new record for content created in the history of the feminine hygiene category in India. • Over 100 million social media impressions. • In addition, all the content videos created with Girliyapa trended on Youtube and had a phenomenal like dislike ratio of 36:1, wherein the like dislike ratio for the best of branded videos is 10:1. • Positive conversation sentiment was 98% with girls in our target age group questioning the societal restrictions placed on them while praising the content. • Girls started to share pictures of them sitting improper, garnering over 4000 posts on Instagram. • Indian actors Huma Qureshi and Richa Chadha, and India’s biggest Youtuber Bhuvan Bam shared the videos. • The campaign was picked up by prominent publications such as Hindustan Times, Indian Express, Scroll.in and News Minute. • The hashtag #SitImproper reached 1.5 million audiences on Twitter.

The Situation

Whisper had engineered the period revolution in urban India with its innovative products and bold conversations. During the launch of Ultra Soft, we challenged a societal restriction faced by every girl in India through our idea ‘Sit Improper’. We leveraged the voices of the most popular youth influencers who through content pieces and their personal networks gave scale to the campaign and made it newsworthy. We garnered a record number of organic views for content created in the history of the feminine hygiene category, a positive conversation sentiment of 98% and sold 118 million units of Whisper as a result.

The Strategy

In India, it is believed that the honour of a family is dependent on how its girls behave. In fact, even how she sits – how far apart are her legs, where are her hands placed is scrutinised. Young girls had hence been conditioned to sit with their back straight, knees together, like a lady. Maintaining this stiff position was restrictive, especially when girls were on their periods and wanted to have the freedom to sit comfortably. While 18-21 year old urban girls were questioning the status quo and being vocal about it on social media, we were surprised to discover that they too were victim to this. Whisper Ultra Soft was designed to provide comfort, enabling girls to sit the way they wanted to on their periods. But for this product to be a success, we had to make our target audience challenge this conditioning in the first place.