In a region where periods are stigmatized, Nana had an opportunity to make change. We wanted to live true to our brand values of ‘Living Fearlessly’, relieve women from their period isolation and shed light on the truth. We activated PR following a simple transformative insight: women are awake in the night due to their periods.

We handpicked influencers and sleep coaches to speak to women in their painful waking hour. Whether scrolling through social media, researching symptoms or streaming videos: wherever sleepless women were, we were there.

Our content challenged the narrative in a relatable and relevant way.

Despite significant strides in women's empowerment in the Middle East, there is still a sense of embarrassment and discomfort when it comes to talking about a taboo topic… periods.

Periods are an upspoken struggle and can be very isolating for women in the light of the traditional and conservating values in the Middle East. As Nana, we needed to change this narrative as we allow women to live fearlessly, bust taboos and eradicate shame and discomfort around intimate health.

Nana aimed to establish a stronger presence by strategically launching its Thick Night Pad in the MENA / Levant Market. Nana, a challenger brand in a hypercompetitive environment, was overshadowed and outspent by dominant players: P&G’s Always, Kotex, and Carefree.

Our challenge was twofold:

1. Connect meaningfully with women around their period

We aimed to grow the key brand perception metric 'a brand that truly understands women' by 5 points in 1 quarter.

2. Gain our fair share of the market while avoiding major spending

We aimed to achieve a solid 5% volume growth and 15% value growth over 3 months compared to the same period last year.

With limited means, we needed to be bold, smart and true the brand. Our insight was that women were kept awake by their periods, which lead to an unconventional way of reaching them at night.

Femcare brands see the night pad as the holy grail of periodcare, as they face the ultimate pad test. But while other advertisers were telling women they can help them sleep perfectly and even look perfect doing so, nothing could be further from the truth.

We set out to bring to light the truth starting with our very own global research of 10k women. This revealed that periods cause women to loose around 5 months of sleep, 62% sleep poorly and 33% are kept awake with fear of stained sheets. We wanted to acknowledge these ignored struggles.

Nana believed giving a name to women’s collective experience acknowledged period sleep wasn’t a bed of roses and would allow us to tackle the period taboo in the Middle East.

This is how Periodsomnia was born. Our quest to create an inspiring movement for better, fearless sleep.

To shed light on Periodsomnia and reach our female audience 16-44 in the region, we pooled in exactly that: a carefully selected group of females between 16-44 years old to share their real-life struggle of their periods at night.

Our aim was to shed light on the truth through credible sources, selecting a pool of 11 influencers and even 2 expert sleep couches. Our selection of women ranged from different nationalities and different personalities, holding one commonality: their unspoken struggle of period sleep insomnia. Each woman created her own video and tackled the topic in her own way. Whether it was scientific and serious or casual and humorous, we had a taste for everyone. We pushed the content on social through Instagram and TikTok, as well as the owned social pages of our sleep coaches and influencers.

We first connected with women with reels on Tik Tok & Instagram, teasing them about #Periodsomnia and sharing night-time filters during their insomnia waking hours. We then pushed carefully crafted stories made by each influencer, revealing a series of personal interpretations around their real-time struggle.

Overall, we created and shared 19 videos and 11 stories. Our content was light, relatable and relevant but most importantly, honest – speaking one-on-one with women of the MENA region. This tailor made content resulted in an explosion of conversation, shares & likes, linking to the brands social pages and websites and encouraging women to share their own stories as well. Most of all, we were able to spark conversation and increase our brand perception and sentiment.

We emotionally resonated with women through our #Periodsomnia influencer stories. Previous to the campaign, Nana scored 49% on the perception metric as a comfort and well-being brand, which we sought to increase. Following our purpose of helping women live fearless and post our Periodsomnia campaign, this key metric ‘a brand that truly understands women’ grew by +9 pts in Q4 2022 vs Q3 2022. We earned our position and perception as a candid and relatable brand. We offset our target, helping the brand close the gap to its key competitors and markets leaders in a short period of time.

Our influencers fan base included over 21 million fans. Social media and influencer pages were vibrant, resulting in 1.6% engagement. Website traffic soared by 119%, and TikTok influencer content achieved a remarkable 34% VTR, a historic high.

Not only was our content liked and shared, we reached over 4.9M users across 3 large social platforms, representing 70% of our socio-demographically defined audience of women aged 16 to 44.

From a business perspective, we achieved a +8% increase in volume for the brand vs. target of +5%. We became the Fastest growing femcare brand in the UAE with +21% increase in value for the brand vs. target of +15%