skills/creative-director/references/legendary-campaigns/cards/essity-bloodnormal-2017.md

---
id: essity-bloodnormal-2017
title: "Bloodnormal"
brand: Essity / Libresse
agency: AMV BBDO
year: 2017
country: UK
region: europe
industry: beauty
pattern: [P03, P13]
category: film
idea_type: campaign
involvement: passive_view
channel: hybrid
duration: campaign
goal: [awareness, purpose, advocacy]
budget: medium
emotion: [defiant, witnessed, cathartic_release]
emotion_tier: 3
insight_domain: identity
media_epoch: hybrid
awards: [cannes_gold, dnad_yellow_pencil]
quality_score: 9
scalability: universal
risk: provocative
confidence: high
quality: canonical
source_url: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr57Tl1Yw2s
---

# Bloodnormal (Essity / Libresse · 2017)

## Insight
For fifty years, every feminine hygiene advertisement in the world had used blue liquid to demonstrate absorbency. Real menstrual blood — red — was a taboo so entrenched nobody questioned it. Libresse decided to show blood that was actually blood.

## Mechanic
A film and integrated campaign showing menstrual blood as red, not blue, across multiple life situations — a woman in a pool, sheets, everyday moments. The campaign ran across TV and OOH in multiple markets. Simple, honest, quietly revolutionary.

## Why it worked
The simplest possible behaviour inversion (P03): change the colour of one liquid. Because the convention had held for fifty years, the reversal was seismic — generating global press coverage, industry-wide conversation, and, eventually, category-wide change. Truth-telling (P13): stating the obvious that the entire industry had colluded to avoid.

## Steal
Find the most arbitrary rule in your category — the one everyone follows without questioning. Breaking it directly and literally, without irony or drama, is often more powerful than any creative concept. The longer the rule has held, the louder the disruption.

## Related
- Pattern: [[../MOC-pattern.md#p03]]
- Sibling: [[always-like-a-girl-2014.md|Like a Girl]]
- Sibling: [[sandy-hook-promise-back-to-school-essentials-2019.md|Back-to-School Essentials]]
- Emotion match: [[always-like-a-girl-2014.md|Like a Girl]]

---

*Author: Serge Shima ([t.me/aimastersme](https://t.me/aimastersme) · [sergeshima.com](https://sergeshima.com) · [aimasters.me](https://aimasters.me)) · License: CC BY 4.0 — attribution required · Source: [smixs/creative-director-skill](https://github.com/smixs/creative-director-skill)*