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Mother Nature as Brand Strategy: Gender and Creativity in Tampax Advertising 2007–2009

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2020

CAMILLA MØRK RØSTVIK
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Abstract

In 2007, Mother Nature saved Tampax. An advertising campaign, featuring nature personified as a middle-aged woman, played a decisive role in helping the tampon brand overcome a challenging period. Five years earlier, the owners, Procter & Gamble (P&G) had developed their own plastic, as opposed to cardboard, tampon applicator in the form of Tampax Pearl, and were promptly sued for patent infringement by the original plastic applicator inventor Playtex (Hanes Brands), a fight P&G lost. On other fronts, the menstrual product industry was battling against an aging population and menstruation-suppressing hormonal birth control, resulting in an annual 1 percent market share drop for the previously globally best-selling brand. A team of women at the Leo Burnett advertising agency came up with a new Tampax branding strategy in response, and as a result the international Mother Nature campaign ran in Europe and North America from 2007 till 2009. This article surveys the issues facing Tampax in the 2000s, and the campaign that stabilized it at the top of the sector by the 2010s.

Type
Article
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , June 2020 , pp. 413 - 452
Copyright
© The Author 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

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Footnotes

This article would not have been possible without the time and work of Catherine Lloyd Burns, Anna Meneguzzo, and Rebecca Swanson—thank you. Thanks to P&G for sharing the image of Mother Nature’s costume. Thanks to Dr. Catherine Spencer and Dr. Jennifer Millard for reading and commenting on drafts. Thanks to Professor Geoffrey Jones, Dr. Jesse Olzynko-Gryn, and Professor Ai Hisano for advice on U.S. archives. An early version of this article was presented at the 2018 Society for the Social History of Medicine conference, where excellent questions led to a stronger paper. Thanks to two anonymous peer reviewers and the editor, Professor Andrew Popp, for incredibly helpful responses.

References

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Zeisler, Andi. We Were Feminists Once: From Riot Grrrl to Covergirl©, the Buying and Selling of a Political Movement. London: Hachette UK, 2016.Google Scholar
Bettis, Pamela, Ferry, Nicole C., and Roe, Mary. “Lord of the Guys: Alpha Girls and the Post-Feminist Landscape of American Education.” Gender Issues, 33, no. 2 (2016): 163–181.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Borgerson, Janet L., and Schroeder, Jonathan E., “Marketing Images of Gender: A Visual Analysis.” Consumption, Markets & Culture, 2, no. 2 (1998): 161–201.Google Scholar
Brodie, Janet Farrell. “Menstrual Interventions in the Nineteenth-Century United States.” In Regulating Menstruation: Beliefs, Practices, Interpretations, edited by Renned, Elisha P. and van de Walle, Etienne, pp. 39–64. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.Google Scholar
Brumberg, Joan Jacobs. “‘Something Happens to Girls’: Menarche and the Emergence of the Modern American Hygienic Imperative.” Journal of the History of Sexuality, 4, no. 1 (1993): 99–127Google Scholar
Broyles, Sheri J., and Grow, Jean M.. “Creative Women in Advertising Agencies: Why So Few ‘Babes in Boyland’?” Journal of Consumer Marketing, 25, no. 1 (2008): 4–6.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bullough, Vern L. “Mechandising the Sanitary Napkin: Lillian Gilbreth’s 1927 Survey.” Signs, 10, no. 3 (1985): 615-27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bullough, Vern L., and Voght, Martha, “Voice, Menstruation, and Nineteenth-Century Medicine.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 47, no. 1 (1973): 66–82;Google Scholar
Dobscha, Susan, O’Malley, Lisa, and Prothero, Andrew. “Moving Beyond Binary Opposition: Exploring the Tapestry of Gender in Consumer Research and Marketing.” Marketing Theory, 10, no. 1 (2010): 3–28.Google Scholar
Douglas, Delia D. “Venus, Serena, and the Inconspicuous Consumption of Blackness: A Commentary on Surveillance, Race Talk, and New Racism(s).” Journal of Black Studies, 43, no. 2 (2012): 127–145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Finkelstein, J. W, and von Eye, A.. “Sanitary Product Use by White, Black and Mexican American Women.” Public Health Reports, 105, no. 5 (1990): 491–496.Google ScholarPubMed
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Fuller, Lorraine. “Are We Seeing Things? The Pinesol Lady and the Ghost of Aunt Jemima.” Journal of Black Studies, 32, no. 1 (2001): 120–131.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gilbreth, Lillian. The Perfect Menstrual Pad. Report of Gilbreth, Inc., to the Johnson & Johnson Company, January 1, 1927.Google Scholar
Gilbreth, Lillian. As I Remember: An Autobiography. Norcross, GA: Engineering & Management Press, 1998. Published posthumously with the Institute of Industrial Engineers.Google Scholar
Hives, Christopher L. “History, Business Records, and Corporate Archives in North America.” Archivaria, 22 (Summer 1986).Google Scholar
Jutel, Annemarie. “Cursed or Carefree? Menstrual Product Advertising and the Sportswoman.” In Sports, Culture and Advertising: Identities, Commodities and the Politics of Representation, edited by Andrews, David L. and Jackson, Steven J., pp. 213–227. London: Routledge, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kidd, Laura K., and Farrell-Beck, Jane, “Menstrual Products Patented in the United States, 1854–1921.” Dress: The Journal of the Costume in America, 24, no. 1 (1997): 27–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kidd, Laura Klosterman, and Farrell-Beck, Jane. “The Roles of Health Professionals in the Development and Dissemination of Women’s Sanitary Products, 1880–1940.” Journal of the History of Medicine & Allied Sciences, 51, no. 3 (1996): 325–352Google Scholar
Kissling, Elizabeth. “Mother Nature Doesn’t Menstruate. Or at Least She Doesn’t Say So.” Menstruation Matters (blog). January 10, 2010. http://www.menstruationresearch.org/2010/01/10/mother-nature-doesnt-menstruate.Google Scholar
Timothy de Waal, Malefyt, and McCabe, Maryann. “Women’s Bodies, Menstruation and Marketing ‘Protection’: Interpreting a Paradox of Gendered Discourses in Consumer Practices and Advertising Campaigns,” Consumption, Markets & Cultures 19, no. 6 (2016): 555–575.Google Scholar
Mandziuk, Roseann M. “‘Ending Women’s Greatest Hygienic Mistake’: Modernity and the Mortification of Menstruation in Kotex Advertising, 1921–1926.” Women’s Studies Quarterly, 38, no. 3/4 (2010): 42–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martinez, Patricia G. “Paternalism as a Positive Form of Leader–Subordinate Exchange: Evidence from Mexico.” Management Research: Journal of the Iberoamerican Academy of Management, 1, no. 2 (2003): 227–242.Google Scholar
Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen, 16, no. 3 (1975): 6–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nielsen Market Research. African-American Women: Our Science, Her Magic. 2017. https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/report/2017/african-american-women-our-science-her-magic.Google Scholar
O’Donnell, Kelly. “‘The Whole Idea Might Seem a Little Strange to You’: Selling the Menstrual Cup.” Technology’s Stories (blog), December 4, 2017. https://www.technologystories.org/menstrual-cups.Google Scholar
Park, Shelley. “From Sanitation to Liberation? The Modern and Postmodern Marketing of Menstrual Products.” Journal of Popular Culture, 30, no. 2 (1996): 149–168.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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