According to the New York Times, Kotex is unleashing a new series of ads that pokes fun at feminine hygiene advertising, including ads for their own products.
The clips mocked in the spot are actually from Kotex commercials, some shown within the last year in the United States or Europe.
In producing the ads, the ad agency, JWT, three networks wouldn’t permit the use of the word vagina. So, they used the phrase “down there” instead and were only rejected by two networks.
“It’s very funny because the whole spot is about censorship,” Ms. Harris said. “The whole category has been very euphemistic, or paternalistic even, and we’re saying, enough with the euphemisms, and get over it. Tampon is not a dirty word, and neither is vagina.”
The article describes a couple of their new ads. Here is the second one they describe:
Another spot, which will make its debut next month, opens with a woman strolling confidently toward the camera. “I’m a believably attractive 18- to 24-year-old female,” she says. “You can relate to me because I’m racially ambiguous. Market research shows that girls like you love girls like me.”
The sense of an ad somehow deconstructing itself continues, as she says, “Now I’m going to tell you to buy something. Buy the same tampons I use. Because I’m wearing white pants, and I have good hair, and you wish you could be me.” Screen text near the end of the spot asks, “Why are tampon ads so obnoxious?”
TV ads for a lot of health products are breaking down barriers to what has been for decades considered inappropriate for TV. Instead of speaking plainly, they dance around the terminology.
“Fem-care advertising is so sterilized and so removed from what a period is,” said Elissa Stein, co-author (with Susan Kim) of the book “Flow: The Cultural Story of Menstruation.” “You never see a bathroom, you never see a woman using a product. They never show someone having cramps or her face breaking out or tearful — it’s always happy, playful, sporty women.”
They are actually making a social issue of it:
Visitors to the Web site, UbyKotex.com, designed by the New York office of Organic, part of the Omnicom Group, are urged to sign a “Declaration of Real Talk,” vowing to defy societal pressures that discourage women from speaking out about their bodies and health.
For every signer, Kotex will donate $1 to Girls for a Change, a national nonprofit based in San Jose, Calif., that pairs urban middle school and high school girls with professional women to encourage social change.
I can’t believe I’m actually looking forward to seeing a tampon ad.
