Back in 2010, tampon brand Kotex confronted the Netherlands and used the word vagina in an ad. Last year, Carefree followed suit and online tampon service Hello Flo went even further with a couple of hilarious spots. The same trend towards openness seems to be developing in the bum wiping sector, long a haven of rolly dogs, tacky euphemisms and smiling actors, and Kleenex Cottonelle has convinced comedian Madeleine Sami, someone who seems to revel in public displays of awkwardness, to get on board and spruik its moistened wipes to New Zealanders. PLUS: Why wastewater experts are waging war on ‘flushable’ wipes.
Browsing: Kimberly-Clark
Since 2009 three dresses made from Kleenex Cottonelle toilet paper have been chosen by judges to walk the runways at New Zealand Fashion Week. And three more designs have made the finals in this year’s competition, although this time the stage isn’t a fashion catwalk, it’s a documentary-style series of television commercials and the pages of Next magazine.
Bum wiping and high fashion are fairly strange bedfellows. But Kleenex’s Paper Dresses campaign has been mixing the two surprisingly well since it launched in 2009. And the final cog in this year’s nine-month campaign, which upped the ante thanks to a collaborative effort between Ogilvy, Kimberly-Clark and TVNZ, has come out on top of the September round of Colmar Brunton’s Ad Impact Award.