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Amy Kraushaar's avatar

I worked in advertising and brand strategy for 20 years. I still only think in terms of marketing, as most of my friends would agree. It's fun, but I have always recognized the dark side of it. I worked on a new product that was truly barrier-shattering: a condom for men, targeted to women to help them protect their sexual health (bigger than pregnancy prevention and more powerful). It was a product idea from Trojan sprung from two insights: 50% of their target audience was the "recipient" of the product and could influence purchase and men don't want to use condoms (that's not the insight) but we phrased it this way in our meetings "if she gets it (the condom), he gets it (sex)" and men WOULD wear condoms if women simply asked them to, because they wanted sex vs. no sex. But women don't know much about condoms except that we've been told men don't like them. And since (another insight) "every man a women sleeps with has the 'potential' to be 'prince charming' -- in many cases -- women don't want to screw it up by asking men to do something that might be cause for rejection. I tell you -- this was so fascinating. The most interesting project I ever worked on. I analyzed loads of data and conducted focus groups all over the US. Did you know that in the South at that time (around 2005/6) focus group recruiters in the South wouldn't let us recruit for groups of women "unmarried, living with partners for x time". We had to phrase the screener as "engaged" or "seeing someone steadily for x time". Crazy. But I digress. There is so much more to this story that fits your writing. The creatives launching the product were inspired by Virginia Slims advertising. We wanted women to not be afraid of taking charge of their sexual health. We did a lot of work to get the line of products stocked in the femhy aisle, vs. the condom area perceived as full of leering men. We provided instructions. We did borrow packaging from perfume/cosmetics. But we had the first black packaging in the femhy aisle -- before Kotex did it. The product was called Alexa. (so much learning about chick name stereotypes in THAT process.) It died because, wait for it, Walmart refused to stock it because, again, in the South, it was perceived as "too promiscuous" or, as one sales director told me, "You're just asking for women to bend over and hike up their skirts." Seriously. To my face. The good news is that shortly after, Play brand of condoms and lubes was launched and Millennials took over and the marketing world and life evolved. But I still feel sorry for women who get divorced, especially at my age (60) and don't know how important it is to protect their sexual health. You can find the digital ad we created for Alexa on YouTube. :-)

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Casey's avatar

Mom, I hate to break it to you.... citrus is also a food

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