For 30 years, Dorival has championed women looking to fulfil their potential whilst overcoming society’s limiting beliefs, including period stigma. The Bayer brand is one of few Ibuprofen products marketed for menstrual pain, leading the seven markets where it operates in Central America.

Through the years, its priority audience was solidified as teenagers experiencing their first periods, a particularly vulnerable time as girls drop out of school and internalise negative perceptions around menstruation that often become lifelong taboos.

To effectively reach teenagers, Dorival embraced social media, with content related to passion points including music, makeup and gaming, and inspirational influencers showing the breadth of possibilities open to young girls.

Beyond the basics, however, the brand identified a strong gap for branded content solely focused on education, informative yet engaging. With schools reducing curriculum on intimate health, Dorival desired to step up, proving its belief that periods shouldn’t limit women.

Since time immemorial, fairy tales have had a fundamental role in our society, by telling universally appealing stories that help young people understand and navigate life’s challenges.

For little girls around the world, Princesses have long been a source of inspiration, iconic role models who teach us we can be much more than we think.

With periods still a taboo in so many parts of the world, we needed their powerful help in breaking the stigma and telling the full story of menstruation.

Introducing Princesses on Periods, a content platform that features classic princesses reimagined as modern, kick-ass young girls. In these tales, Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella are no longer stuck in castles, talking to animals whilst waiting for Prince Charming - they’re going to school, having fun with their friends, gaming and streaming, sharing makeup tips and playlists.

Living their best lives and getting their periods…Happily ever after.

As an educational platform designed to teach and engage young girls, Princesses on Periods needed to respond to their most pressing menstruation-related questions.

Naturally, strategy started with data: a global research phase combining data from multiple sources (search, social listening, category audits, audience profiling) was our first step. Whilst the focus was English and Spanish, top queries were consistent across different countries and, once categorised and optimised for similarities, generated insights into important topics:

Understanding and managing pain is the biggest demand area.

PMS and related symptoms are widely misunderstood, coming next.

‘Is my period normal’ is also relevant, stemming from limited knowledge on menstrual cycles.

Thus, Princesses on Periods was devised as an always-on content platform, activated on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook across Dorival’s markets. Launched with a Hero film and followed by six independent episodes and supporting assets, each video includes credible advice on different period-related topics.

Princesses were brought to life as animated characters, enhancing the enchanted aura of fairy tales whilst allowing the platform’s future scaling.

Choosing a specialised production partner was fundamental, as supreme animation craft was needed to credibly modernise such well-known characters.

Each character was tied to a different passion point relevant to Dorival:

Rapunzel: a confident makeup influencer.

Cinderella: a sassy gaming streamer.

Sleeping Beauty: a chilled DJ.

Our initial priority were their 45” videos, exploring widely-appealing topics with time to properly develop each princess’ personality and universe. Hero and 15” videos followed, designed to directly respond to search.

As our audience, these princesses live digitally: our ecosystem on Social Media, YouTube and website was supported by 73% of the media budget + an extra TV burst for additional launch reach. Activated at Central American schools, we’ve also transformed the content in a PDF booklet to be distributed and downloaded widely.

Launched two weeks ago, Princesses on Periods is already Dorival’s most successful campaign ever.

As of now, it’s reached 18 million views (14M organic) - the total reach media had planned for 3 months was achieved within one week. Clicks totalled 134,000 (450% above monthly average) and all media KPIs were surpassed by 300%.

Engagement, however, is where things get magical: with +110,000 interactions, the campaign generated participation 200x above Bayer’s best-in-class engagement campaign in Central America.

This provoked a dramatic increase in social media followers: Instagram, Dorival’s main channel, has seen 146% more followers, after years being stable.

Finally, the campaign generated huge spikes on organic Google searches for ‘Dorival’, with 880% uplift, and 50 PR mentions.

Unprecedented exposure for Dorival, with only three videos launched - as the campaign is rolled out in its entirety in the next few months, we’ll be able to assess its full impact.