This film starts with a tight shot on a mobile phone in a woman’s hands. She is typing a text that says, “I love you.” The camera focuses on the three dots of the return text. Music amplifies the tension our hero feels as she awaits a response to her declaration of love. The camera gets tighter and tighter. The music pounds. The stress is palpable.

A super builds: “Say it first even if the response might ruin your life.” Cut to an end card with Secret Clinical Strength. The products animate to display three Secret products and the line “Stress-tested for women. Since 1956.”

For 60 years Secret has been the only deodorant brand just for women. But in recent years the brand has lost relevance with millennial women. Our challenge was to connect with this valuable audience.

Unlike previous generations, millennial women grew up with fewer gender constraints. Being a girl was not a hindrance in the same way it had been for their mothers and grandmothers. However, as these young women enter post-college life, they find that the world sees them as less capable because they happen to be young and female. The world seeks to limit them. It doesn’t take them seriously. This is stressful.

Supporting young women as they take on the stress of being true to themselves, in spite of culture, became our starting place. And as the only brand with products that fight the specific effects of stress sweat, we were uniquely positioned to tell this story.