As part of its 35+ year commitment to supporting girls during puberty, Always’ #LikeAGirl initiative found that more than half of girls experience a drop in confidence during puberty. Many never fully recover.

With a mission to stop this confidence drop, Always focused on three areas: improving girls’ education, tackling societal barriers, and improving access to product. This led to our most recent campaign.

Our proprietary research showed an alarming number of girls around the world leave school early or miss school entirely because they lack access to period protection. We aimed to encourage people to help girls stay in school and do amazing things by joining our global movement to #EndPeriodPoverty.

Our objectives: Build awareness and engagement around #EndPeriodPoverty, linked to the brand, while lifting brand sales with a PR-driven campaign.

IDEA: UNCOVER AND FIGHT THE LITTLE-KNOWN SYSTEMIC GLOBAL PROBLEM OF PERIOD POVERTY FOR SCHOOL-AGED GIRLS.

By harnessing a growing conversation on the issue spotted in the UK, we turned the spark into a flame spread across multiple countries. We used every element of execution to fuel a movement, first in the UK, then the U.S., Canada, Turkey, etc.

We built around a "Buy one, Always gives one" donation program with retailers and in social media, then worked with non-profit groups to stock schools with donated pads. Our social campaign engaged target consumers to join the movement in regionally-relevant ways: by posting photographs, creating images and poetry that built awareness of the issue.

We took a provocative approach: shocking social media visuals, relevant celebrities passionate about girls' education, strategic leverage of data, then drove it home with a global campaign built around influencers, full-page NYTimes ad, video for cinemas in UK/elsewhere.

We know girls are missing school because of period poverty, but with a shocking lack of data to quantify the problem, we commissioned proprietary research that revealed the issue impacts girls everywhere, including in developed countries--1/5 U.S. girls, 1/7 in Canada and 1/10 in the UK and Turkey.

Always decided to take on period poverty by creating awareness and mobilizing girls and society to help address the issue. We also appealed to women 18-24 who remember the struggles of puberty, relate to girls' vulnerability, and want to help. Our call-to-action was to get involved by buying a product for Always to donate a product.

Simultaneously, Always targeted educators/allies to help address the issue more broadly in key regions.

Unlike previous #LikeAGirl campaigns, we built primarily around social influence vs the hero video--engaging relevant influential voices to create content, and an army of influencers and traditional media to distribute it broadly.

Always implemented tailored activation plans in multiple countries to drive awareness/contributions to #EndPeriodPoverty. All parts of our program drove social engagement/action.

1—SOCIALLY-FOCUSED CELEBRITIES: Gina Rodriquez and Alesha Dixon drove significant social conversation, plus created high-impact social content for brand use, including calls-to-action.

2--INFLUENCER/SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT: Leveraged dozens of digital influencers to spread social call-to-action in U.S./Canada/Turkey/UK. Social star Hannah Witton/UK inspired influencers/consumers to share their own InstaPoetry. Influencers visited schools, delivered pads to girls, talked with teachers, shared their own period stories/school photos to motivate others to join the movement.

3--RETAIL: Boots/Tesco/Walmart/Amazon/others developed in-store/online promotions with influencers, generating web content/shareable social posts. In UK, 6 retailers agreed to pay the tampon tax so girls don't have to.

4—NGO PARTNERSHIPS to facilitate product donations: Feeding America/U.S., Red Box Project/UK, others proudly proclaimed their roles in social media and shared social testimonials.

5--ADVERTISING: UK cinema video/NY Times ad also generated online conversation.

REACH

US--1.2+ billion overall impressions; 50+ million influencer social impressions; 130+ social posts; 93.6% key message pull-through.

UK--2.078+ billion overall impressions.

Turkey --Our campaign became talk of the town, and we achieved 164 million impressions.

ENGAGEMENT

US--The program was driven in large part by influencers who took to social media with 800 call-to-action posts creating more than 340K engagements, ultimately resulting in donations.

UK--80K consumer engagements around the call-to-action; 99.5% positive social sentiment.

SALES

See confidential section.

ACHIEVEMENT

Always put more pads in girls’ hands than ever expected.

U.S.--Met overall campaign objective of donating 15 million pads to girls in need as the campaign continues; added an additional 3 million this March.

UK--Initially planning to donate 5 million pads, Always gave away 15 million+ pads to school girls, 3x goal

Turkey--Over-delivered donation target with more than 4.3 million pads.