Libresse (ESSITY) is a global challenger brand (#6) known for its period care offering.

In order to keep on growing and stay relevant to women in a declining period care category, ESSITY, with the support of innovation strategy consultants at Kitchen 8, decided to expand into a broader offering of products for women’s intimate area.

Intimate care was the fastest growing segment in Feminine care globally, with solid historical players and many new entrants.

Coming from periods, how could we enter the category powerfully?

We couldn’t compete on history. But we could compete through empathy.

Our brand platform, Live Fearless, was all about breaking taboos that hold women back when it comes to periods.

2016, we tackled the taboo of periods in sports, showing sportswomen bleeding – a historical first in the category, and provided much-needed myth-busting content for women to keep exercising during their periods.

In 2017, we hit even harder with Bloodnormal, a ban-defying, taboo-breaking and boundary pushing campaign that redefined its category. It drove a considerable amount of fame for the brand, praised globally for breaking the patriarchal stigma around periods.

To stand a chance, we had to bring our understanding of women’s reality to intimate care.

Apart from telling women what to do (“the right soap for your intimate area”), reinforcing fears of smelling bad or treating women’s anatomy like broken cars that needed serious “intimate experts” wearing white coats, the intimate care category hadn’t been up to much in the last few decades.

Despite being a new entrant, we had to be the much-needed lighthouse and break the cycle of shame.

We did a lot of reading – from academic studies to articles to books, and conducted quantitative research in several countries. Everywhere we looked, the diagnosis was the same:

There is an unhealthy quest for the perfect vagina, with almost half of women embarrassed by their vulva and an increasing number hating the way it looked to the point that labiaplasty was the fastest growing cosmetic surgery in the world.

The toxic quest is fuelled by the explosion of porn culture – where most vulvas have been shown as neat, hairless slots – combined with abysmal ignorance – which is bred by societal shame and censorship around women’s genitals.

It was clear that to show women how much we cared about their vulvas, we had to overturn a long history of shame and objectification.

We decided to dynamite the myth of the perfect vulva.

Viva La Vulva is a campaign with at its heart, a lip-sync music video with a twist: It shows a beautiful diversity of vulvas of every shape and colour singing loud and proud to the women who love them.

Set to the iconic track ‘Take Yo’ Praise’ by Camille Yarbrough, which has been subverted to become a feminist self-love anthem, every line is delivered with emotion and feeling that brings that vulva to life.

It subverted dozens of taboos, heroing oysters, conch shells, juicy fruits, cupcakes, evokes birth, ageing, the infamous camel-toe that women get regularly shamed for, and we even see Barbie popping up, anxiously looking for her genitals.

Importantly, it showed women opening up about the issue, the shame, the ignorance and reclaiming their bodies.

Because the only imperfect vulva is the vulva that is silenced and ignored.

The campaign is only at its beginnings but first results are very promising:

Released in Scandinavia, the campaign immediately got praised around the world, from the US to UK to India.

With £0 media support, the film quickly reached over 5 million organic views and 96% positive comments on social.

It smashed all brand metrics, including “brand seem different in the category” – over double the norm (Ipsos Dec. 2018).

And we saw an immediate sales uplift at launch, meeting or surpassing targets across the campaign period, with products Libresse had never sold before.

5 weeks after the launch, Libresse wipes already gained significant ground with market share reaching 33% – not bad for a new entrant in intimate care. (Nielsen data, Dec. 2018).

Not least of all, Viva La Vulva gaining the right to exist in the world was a very hard battle with media owners (see confidential section).

A toxic cocktail of historical prudery and censorship around women’s genitals, and the recent explosion of porn, have pressurised young women to believe their genitals should look a certain way: the myth of the ‘perfect’ vulva

The intimate care category had historically been so clinical and euphemistic that it enforced these taboos - many women bought and used the products in shame, like a dirty secret.

As a result, almost half of women (44%) admit they feel embarrassed by their vulva, many women ignore what normal looks like (7/10), demand a ‘designer vagina’ (labioplasty is the fastest growing cosmetic surgery in the world), and millions avoid cervical cancer tests over embarrassment, putting their health at stake.

We set out to demolish the conventions of the category and dynamite the myth of the perfect vulva. All to show that there’s only one perfect vulva: Yours.