Bayer Canesten: Intensivao da PPK social campaign

AnalogFolk’s Intensivão da PPK campaign for Canesten schooled millions of Brazilian social media users on vaginal health. It is a Winner in the Advertising, Social category of the Annual

AnalogFolk’s Intensivão da PPK campaign for Canesten schooled millions of Brazilian social media users on the ins and outs of vaginal health, with the hope of smashing taboos and encouraging women to feel more confident about their bodies.

According to the studio’s research, one in four women in Brazil is ashamed of saying ‘vagina’, making it difficult for people to seek help when experiencing infections or other issues.

The Intensivão da PPK TikTok page – which translates to Vagina High, with PPK referring to ‘pepeca’, a Brazilian slang word for women’s genitals – offers a frank, facts-led curriculum, shared by creators on the platform. ‘Lessons’ delve into everything from how materials affect the pH balance of the vagina, presented as a chemistry class, through to discussions around what is ‘normal’, and who gets vaginal infections.

AnalogFolk and Canesten partnered not just with influencers, but with experts in their fields – including a physiotherapist, body positivity advocate, and a psychologist. And TikTok offered direct access to the people the brand wanted to reach.

“TikTok was the main channel where we could find our audience of 16- to 24-year-old people from Brazil,” says Alisa Maul, strategy director at AnalogFolk. “We prioritised it over Instagram because it not only had higher engagement rates with an average of 90 minutes per day but it also felt right tonally with what we planned to achieve.”

It’s become a place where people willingly engage with educational content, with #LearnOnTikTok being a huge hashtag. The culture of the platform makes room for a certain tone and authenticity that allowed us to put the subject into the audience’s world, and uses the language, culture and exposure of TikTok to desensitise it.”

A total of 28 upbeat lessons were rolled out on TikTok over five weeks, all of them accompanied by splashy graphics and type. The videos aimed to be playful but approachable, reminding viewers that there’s no shame attached to something that’s a reality for many. “It’s important to use humour in this context with balance,” says AnalogFolk senior creative Gracie Hawes. “Although we approached the topic with a lighthearted tonality, there is a lot of misinformation out there, so we as the experts needed to share the facts in a way that had legitimacy. We balanced typical TikTok delivery with a brand mark sticker that was like a seal of approval.”

The videos were viewed 43 million times, and at the time of writing, the Intensivão da PPK page had over 200k followers and over 516k likes. According to AnalogFolk, this number of followers equates to filling over 17k real-life classrooms.

The studio won a direct appeal to TikTok to decensor the word ‘vagina’ and is now working with Canesten to roll out Vagina High editions in Italy, the UK and Australia.

Agency: Analogfolk
Executive Creative Director: Simon Richings
Creative Director: Sara Pouri
Creative/Art Director: Gracie Hawes
Creative/Copywriter: Jacqueline Hedge
Associate Client Partner: Pete Munro
Strategy Director: Alisa Maul
Senior Producers: Rosie Flood, Erica Sedgwick
Design Director: Dan Saxton
Junior Designer: Eve Mcquaid
Senior Designers: Margarita Iosif; Paul Woodward