From periods to menopause: How marketers are challenging the ‘last taboos’
Marketing taboo products can be tricky with communications playing a key role in education, but restrictions can foster greater creativity.
Whether its sex toys or periods, there are still subjects society at large considers taboo, but marketing can play a key role in normalising the conversation.
However, while the world seems more liberal than ever hurdles remain. Having spent over a decade marketing sex products, Reckitt Benckiser sexual wellbeing global category director Ben Wilson, who works on the Durex brand, admits society still has a “long way to go”.
“There is a misconception that things have dramatically changed when there are still a lot of stigmas about,” he explains.
One area still lagging behind is the menopause. MPowder sells natural plant-based products and vitamins for women in the stages of peri-menopause, menopause and post-menopause. The brand’s founder Rebekah Brown believes menopause is one of the last taboos surrounding the female form and body.
She was shocked to see how behind the market was when she went through the menopause herself. Working as an advertising planner Brown was turned away by the doctor for being too young and when searching for her own solution was infuriated by the ads she saw. This led her to found her own range of nutritional powders to help women navigate this period in their lives.
