A woman takes tampon advertising to task in JWT's U by Kotex spot "Apology".

"How do I feel about my period?" It's one of those questions that will elicit a groan from 99.9% of women. But for that 0.01% that are purportedly represented in tampon advertising, menstruation is the most magical of monthly visitors. When Aunt Flo drops by, expect five days of non-stop dancing, wearing white, running in fields and, most inexplicably, bleeding blue.

JWT, New York decided to skewer these stereotypes in U by Kotex "Apology", part of the brand's Break the Cycle campaign. It's a bitterly funny ad whose insights into the ridiculousness of tampon advertising are aided by a predominantly female creative team.

In Boards May Directors Issue, we featured a roundtable of industry voices in the article "Where They Ain't" to discuss the continuing lack of female directors in advertising. During the conversation, "Apology" was singled out as having a great script that tackled stereotypes about women but lacked the insight that a women director might have brought to the table.

We spoke with ECD Sarah Barclay and JWT global business director on Kimberly Clark (Kotex's parent company) Merrie Harris, who addressed the issue of why a male director - Biscuit Filmworks USA's Tim Godsall - was chosen, the benefits of a female creative team, and the larger impact of taking on an ad industry stereotype.

Why choose a predominantly female creative team? Was it the idea that women should take ownership of the messaging for this kind of spot?

Merrie Harris: I wouldn't look at it that way. We had a largely female team, but we had a male art director and a male director, Tim Godsall. Look, it happens to be that women are closest to tampon ads and can see what needs to be debunked. But the fact is men are right there with us, they can be champions of this idea too. Tim got it right away. We've all seen enough Saturday Night Live parodies of old femme-care ads that it's so obvious, the idea and the kind of debunking that's necessary, that I wouldn't rule men out as having the ability to champion it.

Sarah Barclay: But I think having women work on it was great because we are so much closer to it. You walk down the aisles and there is the baby blue and the pretty princess periwinkle packs, and we've been force-fed words like aero-dynamic wings and flexi-max performance. We consume it because we have to use these bloody things - no pun intended - and we as women are more aware of the bullshit that's fed to us. So I think having a lot of women on the team is just a great thing for them to be able to vent all of the things that have pissed them off over the years. Women were key to doing it but men added some great insights and humor as well.

What are some of the conventions of traditional feminine hygiene ads that have pissed you off the most?

Merrie Harris: Wearing white pants on the second day of your period, when on the second day of your period you just feel like curling up in a ball - that idea of being pure. But the thing that really pisses me off beyond the silly metaphors is I don't think I realized how the euphemisms and the idea that you can be pure and clean and the words that are used are creating such an issue for young girls who are feeling shameful, embarrassed or dirty. When we started to [conduct qualitative] interviews with the young women, I realized there are all these stigmas around your period and all this shame and embarrassment. It made me realize that there's this bigger mission behind our work that I feel really good about and [during the campaign] we're going to push more into those areas and open the dialogue to make young women feel more comfortable about their bodies.

What was the biggest challenge of getting this idea off the ground?

Sarah Barclay: The biggest challenge was getting ads on air that the censors wouldn't pull. We weren't allowed to use the term "down there" or "vagina" so we had to modify some of the ads because of network censorship.

What was the compromise, how does the woman in the spot mention her vagina?

Merrie Harris: She doesn't talk about what goes down there, but online we're going to have a spot that goes directly at the censorship and talks about how, "I can't say that word that rhymes with a serious medical condition, angina." It really speaks to the whole censorship thing.

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