Libresse: Viva La Vulva

Imagine a product category with the euphemistic name “intimate care,” a female body part that can’t be shown by media and which many women can’t properly identify, and a challenger brand trying to break in with its new product line. The integrated Ketchum London and AMVBBDO team was tasked with driving a multi-country cultural conversation and media-driven education campaign to break down taboos surrounding the mysterious and misunderstood female vulva, as part of a campaign to introduce a new line of intimate washes and wipes from Libresse. Our research revealed that women were buying intimate care products in shame. A toxic cocktail of prudery and pornography had created an unrealistic image of the “perfect” vulva: 68% of women couldn’t properly identify their vulva; 44% were embarrassed by how it looked, and 57% believed their vulva should look a certain way – so much so that labiaplasty procedures and “designer vagina” surgeries were sharply rising. We concluded that unless women were exposed to the real diversity of vulvas and encouraged to look at their own vulva as beautiful and normal, genital embarrassment and dissatisfaction would never change. To disrupt the category and propel the conversation, the brand produced Viva La Vulva, an artistic music video celebrating the vulva, to boldly challenge the taboos that prevented women from understanding and appreciating their own bodies.