EDITORIAL: The lies in menstrual advertising

By: Ofentse Tladi

Given how misleading period adverts can often be, it is easy to question what truly makes an advert effective.

Advertisers would have you believe periods are a dance party or a carefree stroll in the park. In reality, they are an emotional rollercoaster, and it is time we saw the truth.

Looking into what separates a good advert from a bad one. Graphic: Ofentse Tladi

The latest Always advert opens with five women in vibrant colours dancing energetically. As they dance, three boys dressed similarly appear, looking surprised by the scene. One girl playfully dances over one of the boys, heightening his surprise. The advert then wraps up with the product prominently displayed, highlighting the sanitary pad.

Instead of showing the reality of pain and discomfort, it presents an unrealistic and misleading image. Moreover, the scene where the girl dances over the guy feels inappropriate and out of touch with the true experiences of women on their periods.

The potential intention behind this advert is understandable as it aims to cast periods in a positive light rather than focusing on the negatives, perhaps to try bring hope to those who experience them. However, the reality of what one truly experiences during their period is more grim.

According to the National Institute of Health, many women and girls suffer from abdominal pain during their periods, a condition known as dysmenorrhea. This condition has psycho-emotional symptoms such as anger, irritability, and depression.

As a writer with a Bachelor of Creative Writing from AFDA, where I studied promotional writing and won the Undergraduate Discipline Merit Award in that field, I have substantial knowledge in promotional writing to decipher what separates a good advert from a bad one.

The basis of promotional writing and advertising is about connecting with your target audience. You want to make them feel seen, heard, and most importantly, you want a powerful call to action that compels them to take immediate action.

A recent Kotex advert titled “ProgressFeelsLike” exemplifies what I believe period advertising should be. The advert captures the often overlooked discomfort women experience during their periods.

It uses a narrative format, combining powerful voiceover with clips of women pushing through the sharp grip f cramps during meetings, discreetly checking for leaks on their pants in crowded spaces and fighting exhaustion while caring for their family.

The line, “being dismissed is being on your period,” underscores the frustration of having your struggles minimized simply because you are menstruating.

Another powerful line, “not comfortable, seen as not capable enough or as behaving enough,” captures the harsh judgements women often endure while on their periods.

These judgements manifest in different ways – being perceived as overly emotional or unreliable at work, having their capabilities questioned simply because of the natural biological process, or being labelled as moody or difficult to work with.

These assumptions can lead to women being dismissed or overlooked in both professional and personal settings, reinforcing the stigma and silence surrounding menstruation.

The world of promotional writing is really about storytelling. It is about using your brand to craft narratives that draw your audience into your world. Understanding your audience’s needs, desires, and pain points and then communicating how your brand can meet those needs in an authentic way.

Advertising is not just about making a noise and selling a product; it is about creating a melody that lingers in people’s minds long after the campaign is over.

SLICE: The business of monetising black outrage

Advertising has come a long way since jingles about cereal and housewives wrestling with Verimark vacuum cleaners. The standard, cookie-cutter formula of selling brands, perception or products with the ubiquity of white picket fences and nuclear families with pearly-toothed smiles gushing over washing powder just doesn’t quite cut it.

With limited airtime and competition over space, advertising doesn’t manipulate the unattainable anymore, it weaponises black rage to cause a stir.

Take the now infamous 2017 Dove advert: the Unilever giant distributed an advert of a black woman seemingly transformed as her cleaner, whiter self after using a Dove body-wash.

The racist undertones of the advert became a source of outrage and debate on social media. The recycled PR apology from the brand made its rounds and Dove still remains as prevalent as ever with the backlash barely making a dent in sales.

Another beauty brand, Nivea, was found guilty of the same pattern of symbolising whiteness as the aspiration through their Natural Fairness lotion advert in 2017.

In 2018, H&M made the only black child in their catalogue wear a ‘coolest monkey in the jungle’ sweater, alluding to the racist tropes of othering black people as wild animals.

Gucci’s recent 2019 advert featuring a white woman wearing a Jim Crow-type black jumper with exaggerated red lips seen in the blackface minstrel performances of the 1950s also utilised black outrage to stay relevant.

Each of these brands have released content perpetuating colourism, racism and a strong undercurrent of anti-blackness in a social climate that makes it difficult to believe the intention was anything but deliberate.

Brands feed on the black response to racist representations and with each validly outraged Tweet comes an increase in their chances of staying in the 24-hour news cycle without bearing the brunt of any real lasting ramifications.

Technology enables us to have conversations across borders instead of a one-dimensional, one-stream flow of information with zero participation at the end. Decades ago, adverts were simply funnelled down your throat with little to no input, critique or comment on how they were received other than if the product sold or not.

Decades ago, people of colour were subjected to racist misrepresentation in the media, depicted as voiceless, identity-less tropes without much say in how we wanted to see ourselves.

Now, we have platforms to shut down the careless narratives people who don’t look like us construct but that we need to realise that the freedom of expression has become a weapon in the arsenal of conglomerates.

Retweets, shares and likes are the currency of the digitised world. If your ideas aren’t going viral, they’re lost in a virtual sea of over-saturated content. Advertisers know this better than most.

The pattern in modern age advertising is to bet on riding the clout of trending on Twitter for all the wrong reasons.

As the old adage goes, “bad publicity is still publicity” and advertising seems to manipulate valid outrage at being marginalised as a way to stay in the limelight.

The problem with exploiting black rage for profit is that, even after centuries of colonialism and oppression, our rage isn’t an infinite resource. Monetising black rage is essentially free advertising but what it costs to the psyche of black people is a lot more.

There are tangible consequences to this: black rage has been a tool for our survival in a world that expects silence or submission from the historically and perpetually oppressed. Exhausting black rage by having to constantly fight for your humanity every time H&M wants their name in headlines is causing distraction and fatigue from what we should be really focused on.

Black rage is critically important, it is valid and it is the very thing that ensured the liberation of this country and the emancipated black identity from the constraints and skewed narratives of white hegemony.

The burden shouldn’t be on the marginalised to have to expend our rage to make neoliberal corporations recognise our humanity apart from what we spend or don’t spend. Black people don’t have to expend emotional labour doing free sensitivity training for brands that should know better.

Maybe originality is dead (and there is absolutely nothing about original about racism), but it’s time for a new stage of advertising where humanity is worth a bit more than a click-through rate. 

FEATURED IMAGE: Busang Senne, student journalist at Wits Vuvuzela. Photo: File. 

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Students accuse South Point of false advertising

One of the South Point buildings in Braamfontein. Photo: Sinikiwe Mqadi

One of the South Point buildings in Braamfontein. Photo: Sinikiwe Mqadi

Students are complaining about dirty accommodation in a South Point buildings despite advertisements promising daily cleaning services.

According to the advertisements, all student accommodation common areas are supposed to be cleaned daily, but Clifton Heights is cleaned only once a week due to a lack of staff.“It is not possible to clean all communes every day at Clifton because we do not have enough cleaners.” said South Point facilities, manager Jan Botha.

Second-year social work student, Thabo Mokoena and other students have complained that their commune houses are not cleaned but said there was no response.

“I ended up writing in their maintenance book that they should not come to my room at all, because I can do better,” said Mokoena.

Students also said that they chose to stay at South Point because they saw on the advertisements that it is a convenient place for students and would be clean.

“I came to this place because I thought they clean for us every day. We are students—we do not have time,” said microbiology honours student, Keneilwe Ranakabae.

Clifton Heights has five cleaners to service 126 communes. Cleaning services are outsourced to the Tsepo Cleaning Company.  Common areas include kitchens, bathrooms, television room and verandas.

According to the Consumer Protection Act: “Consumers have a right to fair and responsible marketing. Suppliers are not permitted to mislead consumers in respect of pricing, the nature, properties, advantages or uses of goods or services advertised, if such goods are not actually available for purchase or procurement in accordance with these standards.”