“Why are period commercials almost offensively unrelatable?”

For some reason, all period commercials look the same: there are montages of beautiful women doing various (very) random activities while wearing all white. When the efficacy of the product is demonstrated, blood is never shown. A neon blue liquid is used instead. It’s almost like period companies are afraid to show what having a period is really like.

For my third project with Flex, a company that makes innovative menstrual products, we decided to create a series of 3 short affinity ads.

The challenge was: How do we show the world we’re not afraid to be real about periods?

The solution: By being honest, maybe even absurdly so.

My responsibilities as Creative Director:

Research: Research for this project was probably the most entertaining of them all. The internet is full of honest complaints, horror stories, and mishaps. It makes sense why: practically every woman has at least one bad experience, but likely more. When reading these stories, there was a common unifying thread: people remember these experiences with such strong emotions. They weren’t “kind of embarrassed”, they “were so embarrassed they melted into the floor and died a million deaths before coming back to life only to die again”. We wanted to highlight these experiences, acknowledge the embarrassment, but ultimately conclude that periods aren’t a big deal. Bleeding isn’t a big deal. It’s a natural part of life.

Writing: Each of these scripts revolves around a single truth, exaggerated a bit (ok, a lot) for entertainment. Women dancing in the kitchen in all white is unrealistic and unrelatable, and everybody who has ever had a period knows that. What IS relatable is the fact that our periods come during inopportune times: during an important job interview, while you’re cuddling with your boyfriend, or when a long distance lover is coming to town. Exaggerating these truths was incredibly fun - we really tried to stretch how far we could take each subject while remaining relatable.

Visuals: Every visual written into this script is meant to slowly increase the outrageousness of the scenario. Everything seems normal at first, until it’s very much not. The set dec is intentionally mundane, it’s meant to look like everyday life before things get weird.

Post-production feedback: I gave detailed feedback to our editor to help ensure the cut reflected what was intended in the script. For these particular scripts, we really needed to get the pacing right in order for the joke and messaging to hit.