Billy LePage on creating a period-care brand for everyone, including men
The strategy director writes about Cycle x Freda—and the power of queer creatives and allies to change the world.
Lynk
Ad Age is marking Pride Month 2023 with our Honoring Creative Excellence package, in which LGBTQ+ creators revisit some of their favorite projects. (Read the introduction here.) Today, our guest editor Lucas Crigler turns the spotlight to Ogilvy Strategy Director Billy LePage. Here, LePage writes about helping to launch period-care brand Cycle during his time at McCann Worldgroup.
Author bell hooks once described queer identity as “the self that is at odds with everything around it and that has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”
I have found this to be an innate and enduring truth in advertising and in life. We, as queer people, live and work in a world that was not designed for us. In fact, much of it is designed to keep us down. That’s why there are endless examples of queer people reimagining the status quo.
Reflecting on my own career as a strategist and creative thinker, the work most meaningful to me has centered around innovation in service of the queer community. “It’s just advertising—we’re not saving lives here” is a phrase that I’ve heard countless times. While that may be true of many projects I’ve been involved in, it’s not true of “Cycle x Freda,” a powerful campaign I had the privilege of working on with a brilliant team at McCann Worldgroup.
The project began with a powerful insight about the LGBTQ+ community. Through research, we learned that an estimated 16 million trans and non-binary people are being underserved by period-care brands. The category defaults to hyper-feminine imagery and messaging, which makes them feel embarrassed or even unsafe every time they buy period products. Physical and emotional safety is a major concern as the community faces staggering rates of violence.
It begged the question: If periods are a human experience, then why do period products serve just one gender?
Our answer was Cycle, a period-care range for everyone, including men who menstruate.
The product line was manufactured and distributed by our partners at Freda, a company that fights period inequity and believes that access to period care is a basic human right. Cycle is thoughtfully designed with sleek, minimalistic and gender-neutral packaging. On the back of each pack is a direct quote from the trans and non-binary community about the need for period inclusivity. To double Cycle’s societal impact, for each product sold, another is donated to a person in need.
To raise awareness, we produced a video series that spotlighted transgender and non-binary activists and influencers Kenny Ethan Jones, Jamie Raines and Siufung Law. They recounted compelling stories of having a period while not being female and what a product like Cycle means to them.
Cycle ignited a global conversation around period inequity. The campaign was critically acclaimed and even won a 2022 Cannes Silver Lion in the Sustainable Development Goals category. Most importantly, it helped queer people around the world. Cycle’s donations and sales significantly increased, and it is now partnering with major companies including Amazon and Hilton, ensuring that more queer people have access to inclusive and sustainable period care.
For me, this project encapsulates the power of queer creatives and allies to change the world for good, and I hope to create even more opportunities for advertisers to uplift and protect the queer community throughout my career.
