On 16th September we launched our new campaign with our 60 second film titled “The New Way To Period”, which aims to demonstrate that there is an alternative way to manage periods, as opposed to the habitual using of disposables that are clogging our oceans and taking over 500 years to break down in landfill.
It was important for us to represent an honest and truthful depiction of what periods are like for some people – uncomfortable, painful, bloody, messy and emotional.
To do this we showed real blood-coloured items, our customers in discomfort and a bin overflowing with used disposables. It’s not all smiles and blue liquid that they've led us to believe!
We want to take the shame out of what we have historically been taught to feel: uncomfortable, unnatural and gross. We want to break down those barriers and empower people to feel however they want to feel, because there is a new way to period with Modibodi.
We were met with praise and encouraging feedback from many people that were ‘relieved to see a period ad that is natural and normal’ but we were also met with some backlash. Particularly, from Facebook, who banned the advert from running due to “shocking, sensational, disrespectful or excessively violent content” that violates their terms.
We requested three human reviews with Facebook of the ad but were again rejected by the policy team – even though YouTube, which had also flagged the video, eventually approved it. It's a disappointing outcome, as the film was created to work against the idea that period blood was shocking.
“Our aim for this film was to open people’s minds by taking the stigma out of what is a perfectly natural bodily function. It was not made to be deliberately sensational or provocative, but to show the very real and natural side of periods, it’s the 21st century and it’s disappointing Facebook doesn’t want to normalise the conversation around menstruation.” Kristy Chong, Modibodi CEO and Founder.
We’ll continue to fight and push these boundaries to break down very long, very overwhelming tradition of thinking of our bodies as shameful, and that being linked to control and power over those bodies, we think it’s a very important frontier that we address.
Do you think it’s time for Facebook to change its policies? We certainly do.
Want to know more about the campaign? Take a peek at our ‘behind the scenes’ footage, meet the cast and find out why it was so important for us to make this film.
