The sanitary napkin penetration rate in India was a staggering low of 20% among 600 million women. While brands had invested huge amounts of marketing money to create awareness about the benefits of sanitary napkins to women, the challenge behind adoption was much larger.

We found out that women were still resorting to the use of archaic methods of sanitary protection like sand, ash, leaves and dust because of deep-rooted period superstitions. Furthermore, our research suggested that women in India were not using sanitary napkins due to an age-old superstition, that should an animal touch a used pad, the woman will turn ‘baanjh’ (infertile).

Whisper, the market leader in the feminine hygiene category had championed the empowerment of girls for years. This time, our objective was to break the silence on these superstitions and get girls to use hygienic sanitary protection.

We first released a film titled #WhispersBreakSilence on our social media and in theaters to get the conversation on periods started.

We then used our biggest asset, our Health and Hygiene program to take our campaign on-ground in over 40,000 schools across India.

We educated 35 million girls on periods and the importance of using hygienic sanitary protection such that the right menstrual hygiene habits were inculcated in them from a young age. The school girls experienced the benefit of the whisper sanitary brand, and our teachers who were mothers conducted these classes to break fertility myths arounds sanitary napkins

We taught young girls hitting puberty about periods and hygienic sanitary protection methods. To tackle the superstition of ‘baanjh’ (infertility), we handpicked teachers who were both mothers and pad users.

We then maximized our campaign through Humans of Bombay, which posted testimonials of girls and educators from our on-ground activity.