Parents can make matters worse. Schools don’t know what to do. Anti-bullying laws backfire. The rumours, gossip, hateful and hurtful behaviour that girls engage in are often an attempt to cover up their own fears and flaws. So what if instead of giving them lectures, we gave girls the tools to change? The courage to be nice?

As a brand that provides odour protection, Secret expanded its mission to take a stand against all things that stink.

As a brand that supports women, Secret created "Mean Stinks" an anti-bullying program specifically for girls that gives being nice a little badge value, a cool factor, a bit of edge.

We knew for there to be any hope of getting girls to change their bad behaviour, it would have to feel like their idea. It couldn’t be heavily branded. It should seem slightly subversive. So we put “good graffiti” print in high visibility magazines that encouraged girls to “be nice behind someone’s back” and sent them to a Facebook page with our good graffiti app. (Some girls took the idea further – to their own school restroom walls.) We gave away t-shirts, aired genuine apologies on Hulu that sent girls to a Facebook “confession booth," partnered with experts on teen bullying who could give real time advice on sticky and stinky situations, and simply provided a place, a wall for them to let it all out.

The response has been overwhelmingly positive. Despite minimal branding, Secret got tons of credit, which thrilled P&G. In fact, Mean Stinks and Secret together garnered over 200,000 new Facebook fans, literally overnight. The "good graffiti" app was downloaded over 250,000 times and wall posts increased x20 in the same time period. Post launch, Secret was the second fastest growing page on Facebook. Every day since, hundreds of girls (and grown women) apologize, share stories, offer advice, ask for t-shirts, vow to be nicer and give mad props to Secret for changing the conversation from cyber-bullying to cyber-kindness. Which gives this deodorant brand a much bigger purpose in the lives of our female target.