Many taboos have been lifted since Canesten came onto Brazilian market 50 years ago. But openly discussing the topic of women’s intimate health isn’t one of them. And the root of this problem is a lack of education.

Canesten challenged us to create and roll out a new global brand purpose: to help women to set themselves free from the shame and discomfort caused by intimate infections.

Our objective? To firmly establish this mindset within the next generation of first-time sufferers.

Enter Intensivão da PPK (or Vagina High), the shame-free school on TikTok that comes with a curriculum covering all the ins and outs of vagina health.

And our teachers? An all-star cast of TikTok creators (and masters in the field of intimate health), ready to bring out the facts about our brilliant bodies.

Intensivão da PPK is a digital educational programme designed to open up conversations around vagina health and combat the myths and misconceptions around this topic, that cause young people shame.

The digital school provide access to fun, interactive lessons, led by knowledgeable teachers, who confront social and cultural taboos around intimate infections.

Our first school, Intensivão da PPK aimed at young people between 16-25yrs old, opened in Brazil via TikTok at the start of 2021. The lessons racked up 40 million video views with 290K students enrolled in the channel’s curriculum.

Canesten’s ongoing educational programme is now live in Italy and is soon to be rolled out in Australia and the UK via several social media platforms, such as Snapchat, Instagram & YouTube - enabling young people to easily access engaging class content and live streamed seminars.

Vagina health is a taboo topic in Brazil – our research found that 1 in 4 Brazilian women are ashamed of saying ‘vagina’. With the government now targeting young people with a message of abstinence, this poses huge issues for understanding vagina health and getting treatment.

So, to tackle a culturally deep-rooted situation where even teachers and parents avoid the subject of vaginas, we used influencers who were happy to shout about it.

We built our school on TikTok, the platform where our target audience, aged 16 to 25, hang out the most – 57% of TikTok users in Brazil are females aged 13 to 24 and use it for about 60 minutes per day.

Our influencers were hand-picked based on what they stand for on the platform, from their attitude and their follower types to the way they deliver information – the more entertaining the better.

Our shame-free school has a curriculum that covers all the ins and outs of intimate health.

The nine interactive lessons and final exam were led by headteacher and pelvic physiotherapist Claudia Milan, body positive advocate Hana Khalil and psychologist and comedian Pequena Lo. They are all credible experts in their field – and bold, engaging and fun.

We designed lessons which specifically targeted Brazilian-specific myths and taboos. For example, the fashion class focused on why wet swimwear could increase your chances of infection. In our media studies lesson, we addressed the alarming statistic that Brazil is the leading country for labiaplasty procedures worldwide, teaching our audience that ‘normal’ vaginas come in all shapes and sizes.

Our cohort of example students were young, well-known faces on TikTok – famous for being outspoken, confident individuals.

Intensivão da PPK was launched on TikTok in Brazil in February 2021 and ran for five weeks.

Since its launch, the Intensivão da PPK TikTok channel has driven:

43M video views

210K TikTok channel subscribers (equivalent to filling 17.5K real-world sized classrooms)

1 de-censorship of the word ‘vagina’ on TikTok (vagina health is now a welcomed topic on TikTok – a world-first – after we appealed and won ‘vagina’ de-censorship)

Our paid media drove the following results:

TopView video had 21.13 seconds average watch time per person (almost double the TikTok Brazil benchmark range of 11.24-14.24s)

Click-through rate of 19% (vs. TikTok Brazil benchmark of 17.5-18.1%)

Uplift in positive brand perception, with an increase of 5.2% of people rating Canesten’s contribution to helping reduce intimate health taboos as ‘High’