Welcome to Vagina Varsity. A month-long, no holds-barred course to teach students everything they need to know about their vaginas, because being a vagina-haver, doesn’t make you a vagina expert. Nobody wants to talk about vagina or vagina-related stuff in public, so we had to create a private platform. Students were directed to a website via targeted YouTube pre-rolls, social posts, and once subscribed, emails were sent to subscribers only. This way, students could choose to engage with us when and where they choose, without feeling embarrassed about engaging with this kind of information.

The course consisted of video lessons and loads of extra vagina, period and product-related information. There were also weekly quizzes so learners could test their new-found knowledge, because the more you know, the less you have to fear.

We started the teaser/sign-up phase of the campaign two weeks before classes started. First, students were directed to the microsite to register. The process of registering for Vagina Varsity was simple;

1. Register for free, on www.vaginavarsity.co.za with your name and email address

2. Receive the welcome mailer detailing the course contents

3. Get email with extra information and super-short video lessons delivered to your inbox for a month

4. Move from a vagina-haver to a vagina-expert with simple weekly quizzes

The campaign had paid support for two months, and although students can still register, we haven’t been promoting registration.

We had the following paid support for the campaign

Digital:

Search ads

GSP

Paid-for Facebook ads

PR:

A 10 person breakfast launch to some mainstream bloggers and journalists

Press release to advertising publications

Paid posts from 2 digital news platforms and 3 influencers.

The strategy and creative behind Vagina Varsity resulted in some notable achievements:

- Vagina Varsity not only dominated, but outperformed the category in reach and spread – people weren’t only talking about Libresse… but way more people were talking about it than normal (in a category where everyone prefers to keep silent!)

- It was an email campaign that performed as much as 20% higher than beauty and personal care industry benchmarks for open rate’s and click through’s

- 2% value share growth over the campaign period – exceeding the campaign goal of 6% by hitting the 7,8% mark

- Brand moved from #5 out of 5 in the category to #4  

- Dominated the conversation online about feminine hygiene

- Met and exceeded our engagement goal by 300%

- Off a R45 000 PR budget ($3,400) we received just over R2.1 million ($160,000) in earned media.