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 connected in 3 key ways:

1. Breaking the silence – We pushed our video brand assets at night on Youtube, Meta, Snapchat and TikTok, tailored to the content formats most consumed by women during nighttime. Brave influencers amplified the conversation, de-stigmatizing period struggles on social platforms.

2. Offering help - We collaborated with sleep coaches to provide tips and virtual interactive support on social at night, created sleep playlists with Anghami and optimised search keywords to become the trusted source of women’s needed information – their light in the dark.

3. Hero our product - Our campaign elements highlighted our product’s superiority, driving traffic to leading e-commerce websites. We also targeted the e-commerce platforms where women were doing the online shopping at night, sponsoring listing ads on sites such as Amazon.

Thanks to data, we were there when women needed us, despite a significantly lower budget than our competition.

We busted taboos and exceeded our targets:

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

We achieved 8% volume growth (target 5%) and 21% value growth (target 15%) over 3 months vs the same period last year.

2. 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. In fact, we achieved 20% growth against this metric and 22% growth against a brand prioritizing women's well-being.

Moreover, we were the fastest growing brand in the UAE with 32% growth across the night thick segment vs. pre-campaign. Growth in Carrefour was 9%, Lulu 27%, Noon 32%, Amazon 213% and Instashop 42%.

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.