In Italy prejudices about gender gap condition the way women experience their sexuality, especially when they become mothers.

The brief was to launch a new line of sex toys for adult women, with the goals of generating awareness about Control's entry into the sex toys market and to positively influence adult women's relationship with their sexual well-being.

To break the taboo around mothers' pleasure, we launched a new line of sex toys through a provocative billboard campaign, purposely programmed for Mother’s Day.

The campaign depicted a mother expressing pleasure with a provocative double entendre headline: "La mamma non si tocca". The line plays with the Italian double entendre of the verb “to touch”, to launch a provocative message.

You can either read it in its sexual meaning: “moms do not masturbate”, or in its social one: “don't touch the mother figure".

Unfortunately the billboards got banned, but luckily we managed to turn them into and opportunity to bring attention to the issue.

Insight and scenario:

In Italy sexuality and matherood are two separate things so much so that 61% of the women declares a decrease in sexual desire after they became mothers.

Key message:

For the launch of the new line of sex toys addressed to adult women (35-54) we choose to tackle the issue and normalize mothers' pleasure launching the message: even if it scandalizes you, know that moms masturbate.

Target audience:

Adult women (35-54 yo)

Creation and distribution of assets:

The campaign consists of a single asset (the fake billboard) that has gone viral and spread across various touchpoints: from digital to print, radio and tv.

When the campaign got banned, we modified the media planning and created a fake billboard that was published as social media post.

The campaign went online organically on Meta channels on May 8th and it was promoted by several mom influencers. After a few hours, the creativity was featured in dozens of newspapers. On May 14th, the comedian Luciana Littizzetto mentioned the campaign during prime time television, on one of the major Italian television networks.

The campaign generated more than 200.000 conversations around the issue opening a debate never addressed before.

We had a positive media reaction over the buzz raised by mixed marcomm activities around the product and the campaign, but we also triggered a conversation linked to women empowerment.

The brand has been at the centre of the public opinion for weeks and the impact of the campaign was massive:

19 milion of impression

+100% in website traffic

80 press releases (25 Tier A)

Several mentions in tv and radio shows.

3538 toys sold during the campaign period.