Intima and Reckitt's 2021 Endometriosis campaign, created by BETC Paris, used narrative film to destigmatise a chronic condition affecting women across France.
ARCHIVEIntima and BETC Reframe Endometriosis as a Public Health Conversation
The Intima Endometriosis campaign is a narrative-driven healthcare film created by BETC Paris for Reckitt's Intima brand, launched in France on 30 August 2021, addressing the chronic condition of endometriosis through authentic storytelling to raise public awareness, encourage diagnosis, and position Intima as a committed ally in women's intimate health.
Intima anchored the campaign in two precise messages. The first, "Ce n'est pas normal d'avoir mal" — it is not normal to be in pain — challenged the widespread cultural tendency to normalise menstrual suffering as routine. The second, "Mettons ensemble des mots sur les maux," invited women and the wider public to collectively name and acknowledge the condition. Together, these lines gave the campaign a dual function: clinical clarification and emotional solidarity. The tagline "Fighting together for each one" extended that solidarity into a declaration of brand purpose, as documented by clapboard.com.
In France, the campaign represented more than a single advertising moment. Intima simultaneously announced a three-year partnership with ENDOmind and the Fondation pour la Recherche sur l'Endométriose, a foundation created in January 2021 by ENDOmind under the umbrella of the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale, according to fondation-endometriose.org. That structural commitment gave the campaign institutional credibility beyond the screen. The brand's engagement reached across social media, YouTube, television, short-form video, and awareness posters, ensuring the message travelled across the media environments where French women were most reachable. The Clapboard Score for this campaign is 63 out of 100, reflecting the strength of its creative intent and advocacy framing relative to its measured public reach.
ARCHIVEEndometriosis affects a significant proportion of women of reproductive age. In France, the condition remained chronically underdiagnosed at the time of the campaign's launch, with many women waiting years before receiving a confirmed diagnosis, a pattern documented in French public health literature. BETC identified this diagnostic gap as both a social injustice and a strategic opening: a brand that could credibly speak to women's pain, validate their experience, and direct them toward professional support would occupy territory that no competitor in the intimate hygiene category had claimed.
The category itself remained dominated by product-functional communication. Procter and Gamble and Kimberly-Clark, two of the top five players in feminine hygiene globally according to Researchandmarkets" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">businesswire.com, continue to prioritise product performance and lifestyle relevance in their creative output. Essity, another major competitor in the European market, has made broader strides in body-positive messaging, yet disease-specific advocacy of the kind Intima deployed remained exceptional. By moving into healthcare territory, Intima and BETC created distance from purely commercial positioning and entered the space of public health communication.
The strategic rationale was reinforced by Intima's financial commitment. According to fondation-endometriose.org, the brand pledged €120,000 toward research and future projects, with an additional €1,281 connected to the 2021 ENDOrun fundraising event. These figures grounded the campaign's declared purpose in verifiable corporate action. Rather than borrowing advocacy as a tone, Intima built it as a funded programme. This approach, sometimes described as purpose-led marketing, carries particular weight in the French health industry, where consumers and institutional partners alike scrutinise the distance between brand language and brand behaviour.
The creative execution centres on a single film, directed by Manes Duerr through production company The Gang, as documented by clapboard.com and betccorporate.com. Duerr's direction leans into the emotional register of documentary realism rather than the polished aesthetics typical of intimate hygiene advertising. The film places women's testimony and pain at the centre of the frame, resisting the euphemism that has long characterised feminine health communication in France and beyond.
The campaign was developed under the creative leadership of Executive Creative Director Alasdhair Macgregor and Creative Director Marie Baillot at BETC Paris. Art direction was handled by Laura Tarlton, with copywriting by Jean-Christophe Lesne — the team responsible for the two campaign lines that gave the film its rhetorical precision, according to clapboard.com and betccorporate.com. Television production was overseen by Tanguy Dairaine and Felix Vroegop, whose roles ensured the film met broadcast standards across the multiple channels Intima deployed in France.
The choice of film as the primary medium was deliberate and appropriate. A written or static campaign could convey information about endometriosis, but it could not replicate the affective impact of hearing a woman describe her experience in her own language. By working in French and distributing across television and social platforms simultaneously, BETC ensured the film functioned both as mass-reach broadcast content and as shareable digital material capable of circulating through the communities most affected. LBBOnline covered the campaign on 31 August 2021, describing it as an awareness initiative that combined advocacy with brand communication — a framing that captures the dual register BETC sustained throughout the creative work. The narrative approach gave Intima something no product demonstration could: a reason for women to trust the brand before they ever purchased from it.
Intima's Endometriosis campaign generated over 3,000 views and 31 likes on YouTube, as recorded by clapboard.com. These figures are modest by mass-market advertising standards, and no broader verified performance data — including television reach figures, social media impressions across all platforms, or brand-lift measurements — is publicly available for this campaign. Evaluating effectiveness therefore requires attention to structural outcomes rather than aggregate viewership alone.
The most durable performance indicator is institutional. Branding in Asia covered the campaign on 30 August 2021, and LBBOnline on 31 August 2021, both characterising it as a meaningful convergence of brand communication and health advocacy — editorial recognition that extends the campaign's reach into professional and industry audiences beyond France. The three-year partnership with the Fondation pour la Recherche sur l'Endométriose, funded at €120,000 according to fondation-endometriose.org, represents a form of campaign effectiveness that conventional media metrics do not capture: sustained institutional investment that outlasts any single film.
Structurally, the campaign's two-message architecture — one clinical, one communal — gave it the capacity to function across different audience proximities to the condition. Women already living with endometriosis could find validation in "Ce n'est pas normal d'avoir mal." Those unfamiliar with the condition could be drawn in by "Mettons ensemble des mots sur les maux," a phrase that turns awareness into a shared social act. This layered targeting suggests a campaign designed for depth of engagement over breadth of reach, a trade-off consistent with the niche but meaningful Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100.
The Intima Endometriosis campaign is a narrative healthcare film created by BETC Paris for Reckitt's Intima brand, launched in France on 30 August 2021. It uses two French-language messages to challenge the normalisation of menstrual pain and encourage women to seek diagnosis, supported by a three-year partnership with the Fondation pour la Recherche sur l'Endométriose.
Manes Duerr directed the Endometriosis film through production company The Gang, as documented by clapboard.com and betccorporate.com. The campaign was created under Executive Creative Director Alasdhair Macgregor and Creative Director Marie Baillot at BETC Paris, with art direction by Laura Tarlton and copywriting by Jean-Christophe Lesne.
Intima committed €120,000 toward research and future projects connected to the Fondation pour la Recherche sur l'Endométriose, according to fondation-endometriose.org. An additional €1,281 was linked to the 2021 ENDOrun fundraising event. The financial commitment formed part of a declared three-year partnership with ENDOmind beginning in August 2021.
The campaign ran across social media, YouTube, television, short-form video, and awareness posters in France, as recorded by clapboard.com. This multi-channel distribution allowed the narrative film to function simultaneously as broadcast-reach content and shareable digital material, targeting women experiencing symptoms and broader public audiences unfamiliar with endometriosis.
The Intima Endometriosis campaign holds a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's strong creative intent and advocacy positioning, set against its modest documented public reach of over 3,000 YouTube views and 31 likes, with no broader verified performance data publicly available for the France market.
Intima's 2019 BETC campaign, documented by clapboard.com, promoted freshness wipes through product-functional lifestyle storytelling directed by Thomas Kelly of NoSide. The 2021 Endometriosis campaign represented a deliberate strategic shift from product-led communication to women's health advocacy, replacing comfort messaging with clinical validation and institutional partnership in the French health industry.
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