The South African femcare category is notoriously conservative. Brands enforce the status quo with their blue liquid demos and consumers remain silent about femcare on social media. The “V-word” is taboo and this results in embarrassment, shame, myths and even healthcare problems.  

Our previous entries, shortlisted in 2017 for a Glass Lion and Cyber Lion spoke about how a tiny challenger brand, with a brand new name and miniscule budget, managed to deploy an email campaign that broke category conventions and began to change the taboo-laden conversations women were having about their vaginas. The work, boldly named ‘Vagina Varsity’ drove brand fame, huge earned media, put Libresse SA on the map globally, grew volume share without the help from discounting and, crucially, moved the brand from #5 to #4 in terms of value share – a feat not achieved for an entire year previously.

The tipping point? We saw that while audiences were all but ignoring us on social media,

they were consistently visiting the FAQ section on our website AND routinely typing ‘embarrassing’ questions into search engines that drove traffic through to us. These consumers desperately wanted to know the ins and out of feminine care – as long as it was in private.

As a result of these discoveries, Vagina Varsity, a disruptive and engaging campaign

was created to teach women something new about their vagina every day. Based on the insight that the more you know, the less you fear – a month-long video course was delivered via email that was bold, quirky, bite-sized and included infographics and weekly quizzes.  Our chosen method of delivery was email – boring to some but perfect for our consumer who wanted to engage with the info in private.

The work was largely experimental with an investment of just under $50 000 for production and media yet it exceeded all expectations:

• The brand re-claimed the #4 value share spot in the femcare category – a feat that had not been managed for a year even with full ATL support of $1.4million

• Despite being the second most expensive product in the market, volume share grew by 0.7% with no discounting and stable distribution

• With an investment of just $3 700, PR efforts generated $216 000 in earned media – 56  times the original investment

• Emailers performed on average 20% higher than beauty and personal care industry benchmarks for open rates and click throughs

• The cut through of the work was achieved with only $25 000 in paid media – competing with a category spend of a whopping $2.9M on TV from July-Dec 2016

The work resulted in a new kind of conversation around femcare: women speaking positively about their vaginas without shame. This conversation was a direct result of our campaign – Libresse outperformed competitors on social in terms of reach and spread for the months Oct-Dec. Our unconventional approach resulted in positive change in Libresse’s SA business but in consumer culture as well.