STAYFREE DAUGHTER'S DAY

Silver Spike
TitleSTAYFREE DAUGHTER'S DAY
BrandJOHNSON & JOHNSON
Product / ServiceSTAYFREE SANITARY PADS
CategoryB01. Brand-led Education & Awareness
EntrantDDB MUDRA Mumbai, INDIA
Idea Creation DDB MUDRA Mumbai, INDIA

Credits

Name Company Position
Rahul Mathew DDB Mudra Group Thinking, writing, execution
Pallavi Chakravarti DDB Mudra Group Thinking, writing, execution
Tushar Sawant DDB Mudra Group Thinking, Art Direction
Vinay Singh DDB Mudra Group Thinking, Writing the script.
Yashima Yadav DDB Mudra Group Thinking, Art Direction
Prasad Masekar DDB Mudra Group Art Direction
Shreya Acharya DDB Mudra Group Thinking, writing, execution
Anand Murty DDB Mudra Group Strategic thinking
Sanchari Chakrabarty DDB Mudra Group Strategic thinking
Ketan Rambhia DDB Mudra Group Strategic thinking
Ankita Choudhary DDB Mudra Group Strategic thinking
Shesha Shukla DDB Mudra Group Strategic thinking
Anurag Tandon DDB Mudra Group Business Management
Nishant Saurabh DDB Mudra Group Business Management
Aaradhee Mehta DDB Mudra Group Business Management
Megha Jaiswal DDB Mudra Group Business Management
Spriha Walia DDB Mudra Group Business Management
Riddhi Mehta DDB Mudra Group Film & Production
Aditya Kanthy DDB Mudra Group CEO

Why is this work relevant for Branded Content & Entertainment?

With the world learning and unlearning, a pioneer sanitary napkin brand like Stayfree too needed to re-evaluate the barriers to normalization. In India, conversations around women’s rights are ringing louder than ever, but menstruation continues to battle pervasive taboos that enforce silence, forcing women to hide their periods. Stayfree believes that such silence impacts the health of women over the course of their entire lifetime – affecting confidence and making better solutions inaccessible. With this campaign, Stayfree is normalizing the menstruation conversation even before it begins, by choosing the right voices to tell young girls that it’s just a period

Background

Menstruation is a subject of taboo across households in India for ages now. The older generation grew up in a culture where talking about menstruation was met with strong resistance. It is this silence around the subject that stigmatizes periods and does not let anyone accept it for what it actually is – a natural process. It reflects in data too - according to multiple reports by organizations like Dasra and United Nations, less than 10% of Indian women are aware of even the basics of their menstrual cycle & menstrual hygiene, and 71% of adolescent girls are unaware of periods before menarche. Stayfree's objective is to encourage everyone to learn about it. To talk about it. And in turn, to make young girls feel comfortable about their periods. Thereby, debunking pervasive taboos and normalizing periods in India – for young girls and for everyone shaping their lives.

Describe the creative idea

The idea is to normalize periods even before they begin – through a conversation between the most unlikely pair – the father & the daughter. Challenging the notion that periods is a ‘woman’s problem’ and meant to be hidden from men, we got father-daughter duos to have their first-ever conversation about periods. Since taking the first step to do anything new is always the most difficult, we didn’t convince them to talk about it. Rather we tricked them into it. And how did we do that? By simply creating a scenario where these father-daughter duos could come and audition for an ad, not knowing it was an ad for Stayfree.

Describe the strategy

In India, girls spend a lifetime making periods invisible. But it all starts with the girl seeing only her mother talk about periods. It starts with fathers looking the other way at the mere mention of the subject. It starts with girls learning that they need to hide their periods from men. Stayfree understood that normalizing periods begins with men. Because if men can talk the talk, then there’s no reason left to hide periods. But involving men is easier said than done when even women talk about menstruation in hushed tones and behind closed doors. We had to bridge the gap between inhibition and action. We realized that a subject that seems daunting at first just needs the first push in order to be broached. If we could only get the men to START talking, their love for their daughters could potentially overcome and END years of conditioning.

Describe the execution

Fathers and daughters were asked to audition for a Daughter’s Day ad. They just didn’t know what the ad was about. The participants read through a script handed to them. Midway through reading this script, they realized what their conversation was actually about. Periods. They fumbled, they stuttered, they avoided eye contact with each other. But we encouraged them to continue with the audition. By the end of it, our script helped fathers overcome their awkwardness to assure their daughters that it’s just a period. The audition was released online on Daughter’s Day across all digital platforms, taking both the participants and the viewers on a journey of discovery and acceptance. Charting a million emotions, it underlines the truth that the shame and stigma that surrounds the subject of menstruation can be easily dissolved when fathers and mothers shoulder the responsibility – having the first conversation in the right way.

Describe the outcome

A film around a taboo topic like menstruation reached 19.7 million people across India. Despite being 3 minutes long, it generated 45 million impressions and a 24% engagement rate overall – significantly higher than social media benchmarks of 8-11%. The engagement rate with men, in particular, was a staggering 51% - in a category so covert that dialogue with men is negligible. Not only this, we received 14.4 million views with a VTR of 61% from men. We saw a 2.5X rise in registrations from parents for Stayfree & Menstrupedia’s, a leading resource on menstrual health, month-long workshop on understanding menstruation. Out of which 25% of registrations were of fathers alone. Most importantly, people engaged in dialogue. In a matter of days, we received 23 million page views from fathers learning about periods, and comment boards lit up with discussions, proving that one awkward conversation can spark lasting change

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