For years people have been complaining about feminine hygiene product advertising calling it unrealistic with the category’s portrayal of women frolicking in white pants through flower-filled fields. Well, thanks to The Richards Group, we now have a more realistic portrayal (nay we say celebration?) of feminine hygiene products.
So how do people react? We give you one guess. They complain. Yup. They complain. A new series of ads featuring a vertical hand vagina voiced by African American, Latina and Caucasian women are being called sexist and racist.
On sites from AdWeek to The Consumerist to MoxieBird to the Daily News the reaction to the campaign is discussed. And it’s not very positive.
For its part, the Richards Group defends the campaign telling AdWeek, “We have a wonderful client that recognizes no matter what they do, marketing in the feminine hygiene category is going to provoke a reaction. After listening to thousands of women say they want straight-talk and lighthearted communication on a historically-uncomfortable topic, Summer’s Eve gave us license to be bold, irreverent and celebratory across a multitude of mediums and to different audiences. We are surprised that some have found the online videos racially stereotypical. We never intended anything other than to make the videos relatable, and our in house multi-cutural experts confirmed the approach. The more important mission is to get women talking about taboo topics and we hope these negative sentiments don’t overshadow that effort.”
And there you have it. A marketer and an agency who both worked very hard to address concerns over the category’s style of advertising, make adjustments and serve up something people actually asked for get nothing in return except even more complaints. It’s enough to make an agency throw its hands up, hand the keys over to consumers and let them create their own advertising. Oh wait…
