BloodNormal ad

As previously mentioned, the inspiration behind this project came from findings within my essay. Within my essay i looked in to the ways in which advertisers present unrealistic ideas of femininity, throughout the mainstream brands i looked at Bodyform were the most realistic in presenting the reality of being a menstruating woman, with their blood normal ad. However accurate the advertisement is at presenting an honest, empowering and realistic portrayal of being a woman on your period, the brands packaging and overall branding is the complete opposite, hence why i believe it will be interesting and appropriate to redesign Bodyform sanitary pads, inspired by the Blood Normal ad in a way that is honest, realistic, empowering and as taboo breaking as their 2017 advertisement.

In the image above, screenshots of different parts of the BloodNormal ad have been recorded, with colours being taken from these stills to get an overview of the colour pallet used. The ad uses a lot of pink tones but not in a way which is overtly feminine; or that plays in to female stereotypes. The overall use of tones is very natural, with the main colours used being pinks, browns, yellows and greens. The use of natural tones furthers the brands message that blood is normal and menstruation is a normal, natural thing. Just to get some initial ideas of the colours o use within my redesign, i created some colour combinations as seen above, i asked for feedback from fellow peers and the response i received commented that the colours were a bit too earthy, they also commented that i shouldn't be afraid to be too obvious with the colour pallet aka using red.

I conducted some primary research to see what colours women associate with their period, out of the 15 women i asked all of them said red.
The fact that sanitary brands don't use red on their packaging due to the connotations with blood just doesn't make sense to me, i believe it would be appropriate and in a way taboo braking to use pink red and brown tones as the main colours within the packaging due to the fact that these are the colours that women associate and experience with their periods, by using these tones i believe it will not only make Bodyform stand out from other mainstream brands, but it will also make the brand a brand for women, using colours that women are used to and can relate to, not using bright pink, purple and blue tones which are there to distract people from what the product actually is, it can also be argued that these colours are used to make men feel more comfortable (as explored more in my essay) as women are perfectly aware that they bleed, so why use unjustifiable colours?

I believe using 'Blood Normal' and 'No blood should hold us back' (taken from the ad) somewhere on the packaging will help to communicate the link to the advertisement and also effectively communicate the message of the branding, making blood normal and something that women shouldn't be ashamed of, once the Bodyform packaging has been analysed it will be more clear where to add the text.
It might also be quite interesting to include imagery similar to the out of office auto reply as seen above, it could be an effective way of not only directly linking to the ad but also representing the time that we live in today not only with the link to today's use of technology, but also the fact that women have careers.