Hasta La Creative!

In the pantheon of mythical creatures, one character has been curiously lost to history, though not to herstory—the Period Fairy, who visits girls when they get their first period.

HelloFlo tells the Period Fairy’s story in this short mockumentary featuring a girl who investigates the mythology, and gets the Tooth Fairy, Cupid, Santa Claus and more to explain their colleague’s mysterious exit from the scene.

The video was a collaboration between HelloFlo founder and CEO Naama Bloom and writer Sara Saedi, who also wrote HelloFlo’s “Postpartum: The Musical,” which broke in February. (A different team of writer/directors, Pete Marquis and Jamie McCelland, worked on HelloFlo’s earlier “Camp Gyno” and “First Moon Party” virals.)

“I really wanted to play with the idea of a female superhero who helped girls with their first period, and [Saedi] had the idea to create the mystery around the Period Fairy,” Bloom tells AdFreak. “To me, this spot is very different from the others because it’s not one punch line after another. It’s funny but also very sweet and more endearing than the others.”

HelloFlo has a knack for finding great young actresses, and the girl here—discovered by Wulf Casting—is fantastic. “She reminded us of Rachel Maddow, and we thought that was a perfect archetype for our feminist-in-training, Lilian Dyer,” says Bloom.

The hashtag is #MakeItVagical, a word that pops up early in the video and gets an animated treatment on-screen. (It’s also reminiscent of the “First Moon Party” ad, in which a “vagician” made an appearance.)

“Once we added the animation in the beginning on the word vagical, we thought it would be funny to keep playing with it,” Bloom says. “Since the idea is that the Period Fairy and the HelloFlo Period Starter Kit are both there to make the first period experience positive, it just seemed right to carry it forward. It wasn’t a hashtag at first, it was a tagline. One early viewer saw the video and tagline and then sent me an email in which she’d turned it into a hashtag. Once I saw it, it made perfect sense.”

HelloFlo has become the poster child for small brands doing big viral video content. But Bloom says there’s no great mystery to its success. “When I think about creating video content,” she says, “the most important element for HelloFlo is that we have strong female characters who are both relatable and culturally aware.”

CREDITS
Client: HelloFlo
Production Company: Senza Pictures
Written by: Sara Saedi
Produced by: Brandi Savitt
Casting by: Wulf Casting
Music by: Found Objects
Director of Photography: Mark Schwartzbard
Editor: David Fishel
Art Director: Ally Nesmith
Costume Designer: Deirdra Govan
Sound Mixer: Wil Masisak
Production Coordinator: Julia Brady
Hair & Makeup: Rebecca Levine
Script Supervisor: Elizabeth Stern
Gaffer: GT Womack
Key Grip: Ben Hunt
Swing/Driver: Joe Chiofalo
Set Costumer/Tailor: Olivia Fuks
Assistant Editor: Elizabeth Theis
Assistant Camera: Noelle Kandigian
Boom Operator:  Matt King
Assistant Art Director: Nelson Mestril
Production Assistant: Jordan Floyd

You remember “Camp Gyno,” the 2013 viral video for tampon subscription service Hello Flo in which the first girl to get her period at summer camp becomes a tyrant, dispensing products and advice like she’s dealing drugs.

The star of the ad, Macy McGrail, was a big part of its success. (It has almost 10 million YouTube views to date.) She had just the right mix of adorableness and menace, and made the character hilarious and memorable.

Well, now McGrail is back in another interesting ad—an almost three-minute-long, impressively cinematic trailer for a book called Surviving Middle School, which her father, Dave McGrail, has published as a kind of entertaining guide book for 4th to 7th grade girls.

Watch the trailer for below. It’s quite well done—decent trailers for books are still pretty rare, after all—and features McGrail playing future versions of herself after she’s gone down the wrong path, apparently beginning with poor decisions in middle school.

Dave McGrail tells AdFreak the idea for the trailer came from Tommy Henvey, an executive creative director at Ogilvy & Mather in New York and a relative of his wife’s, at a Christmas party last year. Henvey enlisted other talent, including Tim Wilson at Friendshop!, who served as director and editor. “I was drawn to the idea not just to sell the book but also as something fun that Macy and I could do together,” McGrail says of the trailer.

A cast and crew of about 30 filmed in five locations in Brooklyn in September. All of the actors, including Macy, are SAG-AFTRA, with one exception—Dave himself makes a cameo as the father in one of the final scenes.

The book itself “evolved from a journal I was keeping for Macy, some writing just for fun, and the fact that I wanted to convey the important message that choices matter,” McGrail says. “It is about the empowerment that comes with making tough decisions.”

The book is “interactive,” much like the old “Choose Your Own Adventure” books, with choices that lead in different directions (e.g., “Turn to page 43” or “Turn to page 45”). The book addresses real-world issues, including a number of technology-based issues—like Instagram, phones/privacy and online plagiarism.

“Though some of the issues—bullying, dieting, cheating—are serious, the narrative is light, with a good dose of humor,” says McGrail. “I hope the unique tone and format of the book captivates young readers and spark discussion on how to navigate tricky middle school issues.”

Credits for the trailer are below.

CREDITS
Director/Editor: Tim Wilson, Friendshop!
Writer: Tommy Henvey
Producer: Patti McConnell
Director of Photography: Joe Victorine, Graham Willoughby
Executive Producer: Melissa Mapes, Friendshop!
Producer: Garrett Crabb, Friendshop!
Executive Producer: Eli Heitin, SuiteSpot
Producer: Gaye Lirot, SuiteSpot
Telecine: Mikey Rossiter, The Mill
Producer: Clairellen Wallin
Music: Able Baker
Mixer: Elizabeth McClanahan, Heard City

It's been a great year for women-empowering ads. Brands tackled everything from gender stereotypes (Pantene) to sexism (UN Women) to cultural repression (Tanishq), encouraged women to be kinder to themselves (Dove), got girls to celebrate their own strength (GoldieBlox, Mercy Academy), and even made a this-is-for-real ad about periods (HelloFlo).

Below, we've collected the seven most popular campaigns of the year. Popular doesn't necessarily mean universally loved; none of the work was received without some backlash or criticism. You can vote for your favorite with a tweet. Not seeing your favorite? Let us know in the comments.

UPDATE: The runaway winner is Mercy Academy. Congratulations!