Situation:

When it comes to women+’s health there’s a big job to be done. Not only do women+ not talk about their health openly, but social media censors words around women+’s health. Vagina is one of the most censored words on social media. Sharing a vulva online can get you banned from social media.

37% were self-censoring and didn’t even know it! We’re pre-conditioned to not talk about women+’s health.

Brief and Objectives:

1.Drive positive reappraisal of the already -famous Bodyform brand and product range, in celebration of its 40th birthday.

2. Continue Bodyform’s journey as a challenger brand and put them at the centre of attention to generate brand power (awareness and understanding of key messages).

3. Drive sales for Bodyform.

Bodyform’s campaign; Vaginas Uncensored, did exactly that, it uncensored vaginas.

To mark 40 years of Bodyform, we uncensored the word vagina, along with 39 other words that you can’t say due to censorship.

Revealing and reclaiming one word a day, for 40 days.

We created a range of content that we knew would be censored. We collated real people’s stories and experiences, working with influencers and our campaign ambassador Cherry Healey to open up conversations and encourage people to talk openly about their vulvas, clitoris, endometriosis and all the other bits in between (literally).

We inevitably got censored… in fact half of the content was censored. The key was to use this censored content, to turn it in to more content, create an army of advocate and generate PR to amplify the cause.

Audience: Gen Z wome: more likely to pay attention to social content than other media, but saturated with content online and pay little/no importance to branded content.

Women in general, are also preconditioned to not talk about their health. 37% of women self censor.

Social Media: Bodyform specialise in women's health, but the words needed to discuss the products they sell were some of the most censored online e.g. Vagina / Period.

Strategy: Use the automated censorship to highlight the nation's discomfort in talking about women's health and create a social movement to lobby for change.

Stage one: Research words, imagery and phrases that we knew would be censored online and create content using these phrases.

Stage two: Build an army of advocates.

Stage three. Be censored, and let our audience's content be censored. Publicise the censorship.

Content Creation, Influencer activation and Media Liaison

Content was created using the censored words, but collating real people's stories and experiences, working with influencers and campaign ambassador Cherry Healey women's health advocate. The content was distributed across Facebook, Instagram, X and TikTok - encouraging others to open up and talk about their health.

As content was released AI filters flagged content as inappropriate. Half of our content was censored across Meta, X and TikTok.

We then tackled the censorship head on, talking with the media outlets, the platforms themselves and with online communities to get the censorship addressed. This was turned in to additional content and PR stories to further the cause.

Objective One: Drive positive reappraisal of Bodyform

Result: Positive Sentiment tracking through online social listening showed an increase in positive sentiment from 3% to 91%.

Objective Two: Continue Bodyform's journey as a challenger brand; generate awareness and understanding of key messages.

Result: Social Reach 8.2M, 10M impressions, 3.9 video views with ave watch time of 10s, 5,000 attentive seconds, 84 pieces of coverage incl. BBC Radio 4, Metro, The Telegraph, Huff Post, Daily Mail, Cosmo, Glamour. 1182K social engagements (226% KPI)

Objective Three: Helped drive a 10% uplift in sales vs. period prior

Our top performing video content was originally banned on TikTok - but we appealed and the ad rejection was revoked. 'At TikTok, we work hard to ensure our platform is a safe space and welcome content on important topics like women's health'.