Bodyform showed real blood in period ads and won the category

Since the earliest TV ads for sanitary pads and tampons, every brand in the category had tested and demonstrated absorbency using a bright blue liquid instead of red blood — an unwritten industry norm nobody had set as policy but everybody honored, reinforced by broadcast standards bodies that were themselves just following precedent. No regulation actually required blue; it had simply never been challenged.

Bodyform (the brand's UK name; Libresse in mainland Europe, both owned by Essity) had already tested taboo-breaking territory in 2016 with a film showing women menstruating during sport. In October 2017, working with agency AMV BBDO, it went further: the #BloodNormal campaign showed a pad being tested with red liquid on screen, alongside vignettes of period sex, a girl bleeding in the shower, a man buying pads, and women simply asking for one at a dinner table.

AMV BBDO's #BloodNormal film for Bodyform/Libresse replaced the fifty-year-old industry-standard blue demonstration liquid with red liquid to depict real period blood, and paired it with unguarded scenes of ordinary period-related life that ads in the category had never shown, explicitly targeting the unwritten broadcast-and-brand convention itself rather than any product feature.

Replaced the blue-liquid convention with real red blood, breaking an unwritten habit no rule required, and turned a zero-cost choice into millions in earned media.

Every brand used blue liquid for decades, so red was instantly visibly different.

The convention was unwritten habit, not regulation, so there was no real barrier to breaking it.

Being first turned a zero-cost creative choice into £3.2M in earned media.

The novelty itself, not ad spend, drove the attention and social voice share.

If an industry convention is habit, not policy, being first to break it can win outsized attention at zero cost.

2 million in earned media on a comparatively small paid spend, sparked debate and press coverage in more than 30 countries, and drove Bodyform/Libresse to the highest share of social voice in its category that year. It won the Glass Lion: Grand Prix for Change at Cannes Lions 2018. Follow-up brand tracking cited by trade press reported roughly 60% of people who recalled the ad had a better opinion of the brand — figures that are agency-reported effectiveness claims rather than independently audited sales data, so should be read as directional, not audited financials.