P&G Brings Plain English to Feminine Hygiene Products

by lisa ~ March 23, 2009

Procter & Gamble’s Tampax Pearl brand of tampons is urging women to “Outsmart Mother Nature.” “The campaign was intent on avoiding oft-parodied clichés” such as walking on the beach and frolicking in fields of flowers, according to The New York Times. It’s part of an admirable trend toward using forthright language to describe feminine hygiene products.

The new commercials make their point - that women don’t have to worry about leakage - in a clear yet mildly humorous way.

But it’s the online-only video that seems a bit muddled. Set to the George Thorogood & The Destroyers’ song “Bad to the Bone,” the video features an actress playing Mother Nature, a pushy mother-in-law type of figure in a green Chanel-style suit. Careening between merely rude and entirely inappropriate, Mother Nature accosts real women on the street, thrusting prettily wrapped boxes at them as they reject the gifts and run away. Only at the very end does the Tampax banner appear.

(To be sure there’s no mistaking the symbolism, the video opens with this message: “YOUR MONTHLY GIFT FROM MOTHER NATURE IS A EUPHAMISM FOR YOUR PERIOD.”)

The message, according to the Times, is that women can lead their lives without being told what to do. Fine. But what does the Tampax Pearl have to do with that? In reality, the video only makes sense if you’ve watched one of the commercials first.

To see the complete Times article, “A Campaign That Erases a Layer of Euphemisms,” click here: http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/2009-03-18-leno_N.htm

To see the online-only video, click here: http://www.beinggirl.com/en_US/funzone_watchthis.jsp

Lisa Tibbitts (Lisa.Tibbitts@Me.com) is a New York-based corporate communications professional with an MBA in marketing. Follow her on Twitter: http://twitter.com/FinancialPR.