In the open blue of feminine hygiene in India, two ocean liner size brands neatly divided the sanitary napkin market and built its category undisturbed for two decades. Culture and consumer mind-set was hushed in embarrassment and it suited everyone to let it remain hidden in the recesses of low involvement. Into these guarded waters came an ambitious little ship wanting to break status quo and win market share. How would this newcomer be allowed in?

In 2015, with help from the very women we were reaching out to, Sofy gained some serious wind in its sails. Young women are the ones pushing for change in India. We decided to give this voice a positive push. Sofy’s values are in tune with the characteristics of the women we represent. These women are forward (Aage Aage) and symbolize change.

Our objective was simple. It was to change the tonality surrounding the concept of periods.

We wanted to implement a shift in behavior. Change something that we would say so unconsciously. “I’m chumming.” “It’s that time of the month”

And in India, the phrase “I’m Down”

But are you really feeling down? If no, then why say so and with this thought process our creative idea was: #imnotdown.

With a series of 4 digital films (Sofy conversations) featuring (A testimonial, Rene Verma-Poetry slam, Kavya and Khyati Trehan-Sing-along and Radhika Vaz-Stand Up Comedy), we brought our idea to life.

A sanitary napkin brand talking to young women on a public platform was bold and ambitious. How did we counter this?

The tonality of these videos was backed by the fact that we needed to be positive in our approach. We wanted to have a forward narrative without sounding preachy and pretentious. We were just steering the conversation about periods onto a more positive trajectory.

The results were astonishing! We had planned for some boosted reach but received a powerful swell of young evangelists who liked, engaged, shared, made us trend nationally, and gave us organic traction through online channels. And it seems our competitors noticed too; their current ads use familiar contexts and even words like ‘aage aage’! Flattering really.

#imnotdown trended on Twitter and Facebook for 4 weekends consecutively.

Despite not paying for any Twitter activity nearly 14,000 conversations were recorded as seeding activity. 83.5% of the responders on Twitter were core TG.

100% of the searches related to the campaign were organic.

It was organically picked up by buzzy online news channels like ScoopWoop, Cosmopolitan as well as bloggers.

The brand saw significant increase in recommendation, consideration and trial of Sofy among non-users, unaided recall, advanced and modern image rose too impacting purchase intention.