Why is this work relevant for Creative Strategy?

India is an under penetrated market when it comes to sanitary protection. And it mainly comes from the silence around menstruation and menstrual hygiene is passed down from one generation to another. For a leading brand like Stayfree to grow, it’s important to unmute the conversations around periods and to normalise it. That’s why to normalise the conversation with girls entering menarche is an important step towards growing their share. And Covid needed Stayfree to design a new strategy to help these girls through their fears and embarrassment around their first period, during lockdown.

Background

Amidst a constant battle with cultural baggage that stigmatized menstruation, Stayfree has always championed progressive conversation with a sharp focus on people, product and process. As India went into lockdown, Stayfree realized that like everything else in the world, challenges around menstruation had multiplied under the impact of the Covid-19 too. While the process and product were being taken care of – people were in a state of discomfort and Stayfree needed to do something about it. While the category had low penetration, it made business sense for Stayfree to revisit how young girls were going to experience their first period & all that came with it – the shame, the hiding and the emotional pain. It was important for Stayfree to expand its purview and talk not just about the functional aspects of sanitary protection but own the conversation around the psychological journey of the first period experience.

The Interpretation of the Challenge (30% of vote)

It’s 2021, but girls in India still find themselves thrown into a cycle of shame & silence, when they start menstruating. Periods isn’t a conversation that even the female members of their families have properly with them. They’re often left with to handle the discomfort with a piece of cloth and many unanswered questions. It gets more uncomfortable in large Indian families with fathers, uncles, brothers and grandfathers around. They often seek comfort and answers in their teachers and their school friends. With COVID-19, these challenges magnified. Schools, offices, roads were shut & families were forced to locked up together. During the first 2 months of the lockdown, nearly 2 million girls had their first periods and over the course of the next few months, many more would have them too. Stayfree wanted to help the girls from getting isolated from their own families during their first period.

The Insight / Breakthrough Thinking (30% of vote)

Stayfree needed to find allies for girls’ in their first period experience. Girls experiencing periods for the first time in their lives didn’t know what to expect. Even when they turned to their mothers for information, a lot of them were shushed since a lot of them were ill equipped to talk about the ‘how’s and ‘why’s of periods. We asked ourselves ‘Why is it that committed parents became distant & indifferent only when it came to menstruation?’ That’s when we realized that culture had taught families that menstruation was a ‘women’s problem’ and only women needed to ‘deal’ with it. We had to flip the narrative. With a message that a girl's period was not hers alone, but everyone else's as well. And with online content consumption sky-rocketing during Covid-19, it was the perfect time to target every family member with our message - it's just a period.

The Creative Idea (20% of vote)

Given the pandemic, girls experiencing their first periods had no access to teachers or friends - their primary source of the information on periods. They would have had to reach out to members within the family in some way to have these conversations – a prospect that already scared them & induced guilt. Amidst the lockdown, while everyone else at home rediscovered the essence of togetherness in these tough times, these girls were dealing with problems they knew nothing about, absolutely alone. For Stayfree to ease the tension, it needed to reach out to families and encourage them to have conversations that can lead to a more comfortable experience for girls. We decided to give families the onus of normalizing girls’ period experience. We gave them a simple message to imbibe and share with girls in their lives - ‘It’s Just a Period’.

The Outcome / Results (20% of vote)

For a year like 2020, business results need to be looked at differently. Our work reached a wide set of audiences, triggering them into action. It was a purposeful step towards making period experiences less traumatic for millions of girls for years to come. 1. Our video message reached a total of 15.33 million audiences across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram 2. Influencers helped us reach a diverse audience set & gave us sustained engagement of 1.01 Million across the campaign period 3. For us to realistically change period experiences across homes, we needed to take the conversation to men and elders of the family. Within the 10.17 million views on the first video, 1.03 million were male users in the age group of 25-45 and parents. Their view-through-rate was as high as 41.49% 4. 450 parents and 50 NGO field workers registered on Menstrupedia and were trained to become future educators

Please tell us how the brand purpose inspired the work

Stayfree has always championed progressive conversations around menstruation. Whether it is about challenging biases or triggering conversations or driving awareness and educating people, they have done it all. The inspiration for this work came from Stayfree’s mission of making a comfortable period experience accessible to anyone and everyone in India. Stayfree wanted to ease the tension surrounding menstruation in families and encourage anyone and everyone to have conversations that can lead to a more comfortable experience.