Plasters shaped like period pads to get everyone talking about periods.
Client: The Case for Her (Sponsored by McKinsey Design and D&AD)
Duration: 2 months, 2019
Topic: Destigmatising Periods
Winner, D&AD New Blood Graphite Pencil, 2019
The Brief
A brief written by McKinsey Design, The Case for Her and D&AD: ‘End period stigma’. The campaign had to be global and local.
The Outcome
A gender neutral campaign using plasters to end period poverty. This was before the eradication of 'tampon tax' in the UK, so the visual metaphor compared the fact that plasters were not taxed, but period products were, even when both soaked up blood.
Key Insights
Speaking about periods has become a gendered construct, despite blood itself being gender-neutral. Conversations about periods with people who don’t have periods usually exclude the actual physical and emotional experience of menstruation.
Context
Two key observations informed this project:
Most period campaigns target cis-women, and do not generally recognise that not all people who have periods are cis-women.
Both sanitary pads and plasters do the same thing: soak up blood. But one is taxed and the other isn’t. It’s one of the many examples of how period stigmas are affecting global wellbeing and body confidence.
