2019 Brave Awards commended, Essity

This is the story of what happens when you decide to tackle taboos in a category. Or, as some haters called it: “This is what happens when whores and pimps become marketers and advertisers”*. And how, if done because it is the right thing to do for consumers, it can change a brand’s fortune, an entire organisation, culture and society. For good. But tackling taboos is not for the faint-hearted. There will be many who will not want you to, as such is the strength of taboos that they create violent and visceral reactions. It requires to fight some battles you could never have foreseen with a resilience you never knew you had. But the rewards will be great when you see the difference you can make and when you genuinely change society for the better. In a category that had long preferred euphemisms at the expense of empathy, and in a world that censors normal representations of periods or of women’s anatomy, a small team of people from the global brand and from the...