Period talk. Feminine hygiene ads. Whatever you want to label them, advertisers have been trying to sell tampons based on the notion that women somehow equate twirling on a beach to having their period. We've all seen these highly laughable, but always slightly uncomfortable tampon ads over the years. Laughable, in that women with long, perfect hair are seen running along a beach or cuddling a kitten or jumping around in pink athletic gear delivering some cheesy line about feeling "fresh" or "free" or something equally ridiculous. They're uncomfortable in that any woman that's had to endure watching one while there's a male within a 50-yard radius knows the exact real life definition of awkward. That being said, I have to give it up to the ladies at JWT New York for this brilliant campaign for Kotex. It's hilarious and ballsy - they weren't afraid to go and make fun of themselves. They actually took clips from their old, guilty-of-doing-exactly-what-we're-now-making-fun-of ads and put them in this spot to prove their point. The writing has chops too. They originally wrote the ads with the word "vagina" but several networks rejected it, so they quickly replaced it with "down there" and two out of three networks rejected that. What they did run with may not be 'keeping it as real' as the creatives at JWT would have liked, but it's Laugh Out Loud funny. The lines in this spot are just too good for me to mention - I have a strict "zero spoilers" policy on stuff this good. Watch and ENJOY!
Oh, and just for kicks, I've included their mega-awesome print ad for a double dose of hilarity.