While the stigmas surrounding women’s behavior on their periods have a significant impact on the confidence of women, they have become so ubiquitous in society that we mostly don’t even notice them. They are often perpetuated through subtle remarks and jokes made without any ill will. Given this, the brand could not afford to be subtle in its approach.

This led to the idea of “It’s me. It’s not my period.” The intent was to highlight that whenever a woman expresses herself in a strong and emotive way, it is a sign of her personality, not because she is on her period. By presenting situations in which a woman’s behavior could be misconstrued as her being on her period and challenging that perception, the brand could become the champion of women’s rights to freely express themselves without anyone disregarding or writing them off as being hormonal or on their periods.

#Itsnotmyperiod was launched with a social experiment where the brand staged a live performance and asked men and women to identify the person who was on her period based on a heated exchange between co-workers. Naturally the woman who lost her temper was identified as the culprit forcing both men and women to come face to face with their own period misconceptions.

Given that the audience was young women, the team opted for a 100% digital strategy, utilizing a mix of online advertising and videos, social media, programmatic and retargeting to drive scale and conversation.

This had three benefits: it allowed the brand to meet its audience where they were, it allowed women to immediately join in the conversation, commenting, sharing and creating their own. And by targeting through behaviors and interests, rather than simply demographics, the brand’s messaging was more relevant to its recipients.

#ItsNotMyPeriod caused U by Kotex to achieve its highest sales volume and market share results since the brand launched and outpaced category growth 3:1.

Business Objectives:

-We increased sales by 3% sales and our performance exceeded P&G’s results in the same period by more than 1.5x.

-The campaign achieved 74M+ social media impressions, 70% of them were earned.

-Our market share grew by 0.4 points while P&G’s share increased by only 0.1 share points in the same period, also +26% lift in awareness and +14% lift in purchase intent.

UbK became the “Most relevant Brand on YouTube in Canada in September and December 2016" and gained 75% of engagement, being the highest of the brand’s history.

Click through rates for our online advertising and social posts performed over 2x industry standards and our engagement rate exceeded benchmarks, sometimes by as much as 250%.

(Sources: Nielsen MarketTrack, Socialbakers, Facebook)