Little red ‘period people’ replace blue liquid and women-only in new Sofy campaign
Nearly a year after feminine hygiene company, Unicharm, attracted headlines for fat-shaming, the company has launched a new attention-grabbing campaign featuring little red ‘period people’ trapped inside a feminine hygiene pads.
The ‘product demonstration’ campaign by J. Walter Thompson in Melbourne, features a group of people in red suits ‘trapped’ inside a padded room, showing how Sofy pads draw the period away from the surface of the pad, making them more comfortable for women.
A series of 15-second digital pre-roll ads are named as different demonstration numbers and then allow people to click through to get a free sample.
Sometimes, whatever gets people talking about a problem, right? As a woman, I feel it’s odd to use colours *other* than red … are our sensitivities so precious that we can’t be exposed to the idea of blood to sell a product that’s meant to deal with said blood?
I actually think it’s hilarious that some of the ‘period people’ are male! It is ‘men-struation’ after all, and god knows the jokes have done the rounds on that pun for long enough! 😉
As an old white man, I can well remember the days when condoms, which were called “French Letters,” perhaps in retaliation to the French who called them “Capote Anglaise,” were available only at a chemist’s shop, were always hidden from view, and had been previously wrapped by the chemist, with plain brown or plain green paper.
Sanitary napkins and tampons were also available at chemist’s shops and were similarly hidden from view and wrapped in plain paper; later they were stacked on shelves in both chemists and supermarkets, but were still wrapped in green or brown paper.
Why we later exposed them all, but decided, in the case of sanitary napkins and tampons, to use blue liquid to represent blood, is a mystery; unless, perhaps, they wanted to elevate its status, by expanding the myth of royal blood.
It is just as much a mystery to this old white man, why the current ad uses little men and women dressed in red suits. The simplistic “Bertie Germ boys,” and the “Toilet bowl elves” of old, once used to educate children, are surely out of place for this adult information.