Hasta La Creative!

That time of the month has truly arrived. The world’s been abuzz over HelloFlo’s online film about an young, entrepreneurial “Camp Gyno” who wields her status as the first menstruater at her summer camp like she’s the Walter White of tampons. Promoting Naama Bloom’s subscription service for feminine products, the video shows how advertising in the category certainly has matured. Its gutsy young star freely tosses around words like “vag” and “vagina,” and even demonstrates that time of the month with a blood-squirting doll.

Such candor isn’t exactly a new thing in menstrual marketing. Over the past few years we’ve seen girly goods advertising become increasingly risqu and fun. Take, for example, U.K.company Bodyform, whose fictional CEO Caroline Williams addressed the category’s silly conventions when responding to a man’s Facebook complaints about his menstruating girlfriend. Similarly, 2010 ads for Kotex out of JWT New York took the piss out of blue liquid, and this Tampax ad from 2006 out of Leo Burnett, Chicago, featured a high schooler leaping through a cafeteria with glee announcing, “I’m menstruating!”

The HelloFlo ad, however, brings even more grit to girls, channeling the balls and potty mouth of some of today’s powerful young female protagonists (Kick Ass’ Hit-Girl, Hunger Games’ Katniss, even Disney’s Merida). That stance, along with some awesome writing and production, have sent it straight to the top of the cluttered social-media marketplace, its star an eye-opening contrast to the angsty, arguably most famous period-getter in pop culture, Judy Blume’s Margaret.

Continue reading at AdAge.com