Insight
India lags behind most developing markets when it comes to sanitary napkin usage; only 40% of urban women use sanitary napkins in India.
Menstruation is Taboo in the subcontinent – surrounded by ridiculous, shaming myths and disempowering stories. It is not discussed openly and girls starting this phase of their lives could only rely on advice from their mothers. In a vacuum of knowledge, they have little choice but to follow what they are told absolutely.
Such secrecy has allowed key myths to emerge and sanitary towels have become a category of ‘shame’.
Mediacom’s challenge was to drive trial for Whisper Ultra, a high performance product in a category that no-one would talk about.
Even the target of urban women obeyed a complex set of social rules and ‘DOs’ and ‘DONTs’ attached to ‘those days’. Traditional category messages have focused on practical measures such as the ‘constant worry of staining’.
Mediacom’s insight was that it needed to go beyond performance and deal with the feeling of inferiority that a woman has, when she is menstruating. Specifically, it needed to address the way that society makes women feel disempowered. It was time to ditch age-old (often ridiculous) period taboos like “a menstruating women should be isolated because she is unclean”.
It needs to reposition periods as just one more symbol of femininity. This firmly in line with Whisper’s brand position as an enabler for women to be ‘Unstoppable’. The agency would extend this to ensure that women could be “unstoppable” regardless of the time of month.
It would undertake the difficult task of driving mind-set change.
Strategy
Mediacom subverted the silly stories, by encouraging menstruating women to TOUCH THE PICKLE! (Yes, you read that right. It says TOUCH THE PICKLE!)
The strategy was designed to put the myths around menstruation back in their box. It needed to demonstrate just how ridiculous they were and enable the target to break free of the social taboos.
The agency identified the subcontinent’s most ridiculous rumours and started a conversation that put them in their place.
At the heart of thestrategy would be a multi-media initiative to encourage women, across top urban communities, to question, and break free from period related social taboos; reinforcing ‘Whisper’ as the enabler. The message would centre around a popular Indian myth is that if a menstruating woman touches Pickle - a popular everyday food condiment – it will spoil; symbolism of her impurity during those days.
#touchthepickle, identified as one of the most prevalent and ridiculous period taboo, was used as metaphor for freedom from taboos.
The message would run through three key phases. First it would start a conversation and get the subcontinent talking about (and rejecting) the myths of menstruation.
In the second phase, Mediacom would seed content including video across social media, backed up by more conversation from key opinion leaders. It would also invite women to contribute their own experience of taboos.
Finally, it would educate the target by getting anthropologists to explain the genesis of the social taboos and encourage women to pledge to #touchthepickle. The final stage of the initiative would also tie the story together with Whisper by including seeded stories that demonstrated how every girl with Whisper could be unstoppable.
Execution
TOUCH THE PICKLE was brought to life in three phases:
Phase I - Generate buzz, trigger conversations around menstrual taboos
Touch points: PR, Social Media, Radio
• The agency released Nielsen survey results as conversation starters. Example: 59% of urban women don’t touch the pickle during their periods OR 47% of urban women in South India sleep on the ground during periods.
• A debate was sparked on a popular News channel amongst a prominent influencers’ panel.
• Top radio jockeys and Key Opinion Leaders kick started campaign with survey results seeded in their conversations.
Phase II - Seeding #touchthepickle as the initiative mantra
Touchpoints: Social Media, Radio, TV & iVideo
• Mediacom launched “touch the pickle” video on YouTube & TV. Key Opinion Leaders shared & talked about the video. Started conversations across media to build quick reach & frequency.
• It then ran a contest on social media and radio, women were invited to talk about the taboos they wanted freedom from.
Phase III – Initiative launch
Touchpoints: Social Media, iVideo, TV & Radio
• Next it got Anthropologists to talk about the genesis of these existing taboos & their ‘irrelevance today’ on Radio & in Social Media.
• Users were then converted to movement champions by urging them, to share their testimonials, and encouraging other women to pledge support by ‘touching the pickle’.
• Influencer stories were seeded across PR/radio/Social to drive ‘How Every girl with WHISPER can be Unstoppable’.
• Press conferences in key cities. Celebrities & social activists publicly supported the movement. Event was tweeted LIVE.
Results
All that pickle touching helped Whisper Ultra achieve its ‘highest ever’ value share.
It transformed Whisper Ultra’s market position and #touchthepickle helped the brand achieve its ‘highest ever’ value share in top tier (+1.7 points vs Year ago) making it a 40+ share brand in the category. Value offtake grew by four percentage points quarter on quarter.
#touchthepickle was one of P&G’S most successful campaigns in the region, Generating $6.1m worth of Earned Media coverage (vs.$ 3.5m target).
It delivered more than 1.2bn Earned Media Impressions (vs. 500 million target) and 2.9m women pledged/participated.
The video was watched 1.9m times.
It didn’t just drive sales and engagement, it also improved brand values, boosting most key equity scores by 5% to 10% but TOMA for Whisper rose by an incredible 15%.
The activity also improved Path to Purchase ratios dramatically. Consideration to Awareness ratio improved 77 vs. 73 pre- track, while the Purchase to Consideration ratio improved to 74 vs. 70 pre-track.
Awareness of the message was incredible with benchmark smashing unaided recall for the campaign at 73%. Association with Whisper was 55% and unaided recall for the key movement message hit 61%.