The Strange, Amazing History Of…Tampon Advertising?

1:21 pm, January 12th | by Hillary Reinsberg

I never thought of tampon advertising as a fascinating business. Who would?! But oh, how I was wrong!

AdWeek has a piece today on, of all things, the funny history of tampon advertising. Even today, we’re not exactly conditioned to see a bloody tampon splashed across a billboard, are we? So imagine what advertisers were faced with half a century ago.

Turns out those Mad Men era advertisers were pretty creative. Without mentioning exactly how a tampon worked, they used a photo of a woman getting out of a swimming pool in a white dress. As you know, it’s not something you can do too gracefully while wearing a pad. And that implied advertising has held on for decades — today’s tampon ads feature images of women exercising carefree. We don’t have to be told what that means — we just get it.

There’s no info on exactly who came up with the idea, but we’re putting our money on a woman.

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