Ugh! It was all going so well there for a while!
That ‘Camp Gyno’ ad for Hello Flo really made me think we were turning a corner with the marketing of feminine hygiene products. It was funny and irreverent and featured a fantastic ‘menstruation demonstration’ that made innovative use of a Dora the Explorer doll and a bottle of ketchup.
It was a million miles from the blue liquid and roller-blading clichés featured in decades of ads.
This video is not a real Tampax commercial, but a promotional short for the film Movie 23 masquerading as a tampon ad from Russia. Where they seem to have a particularly serious shark problem. Hmm.
That said it had a lot of people fooled!
It starts off weirdly sexy – along the lines of this Spanish number - with two ladies in bikinis on the beach, and yards of tanned flash on display. One’s a blond and one’s a brunette, these ad execs have cleverly featured both the types of women available. I guess that’s why they pay them the big bucks.
Advertised
The plot gets pretty grisly from there on in. Both the women hop into the sea for an aul dip, but the brunette is quickly and graphically bitten in half by a shark. The voiceover tells us Tampax are now leak-proof. Em, good I suppose.
It's a head-scratcher! Why is the ad industry trying to make periods sexy? Its as if they don't know that their primary market for tampons s female! I for one have enough to worry about during my period without adding pressure to be sexy and increased risk of shark attacks into the mix.
Peculiar as this ad is, I still prefer it to mother nature interrupting photo shoots with her ‘monthly gift’. That woman saying ‘perrrriod’ is possibly the most irritating thing on TV at the moment.
What do you think of this Russian offering? Bit of harmless fun or weird and disturbing?
