Libresse Viva la Vulva Rewrote the Rules of Intimate Care Advertising
Viva la Vulva is a 2018 healthcare advertising campaign created by AMV BBDO for Libresse, released in November 2018 across Sweden, Norway, and the United Kingdom, using a three-minute music video to celebrate female anatomy and challenge the body shame surrounding intimate care products.
Libresse released the campaign on 23 November 2018, marking its most significant creative departure since establishing the Live Fearless platform with AMV BBDO in 2013, as reported by thedrum.com. Where earlier Libresse work had challenged menstrual stigma — including the 2017 BloodNormal film, which earned a D&AD White Pencil, and the 2016 Red.fit campaign, which replaced blue liquid with red in period-product advertising — Viva la Vulva moved the brand into entirely new territory. The film extended Libresse's product range from menstrual care into intimate washes, wipes, and liners, and extended the brand's cultural ambition from period normalisation to genital confidence, as documented by caples.org and adsoftheworld.com.
In the United Kingdom, the campaign arrived at a moment when representations of the female body in advertising remained constrained by regulatory caution and category convention. Libresse chose to discard both. The film assembled shells, fruit, origami, leaves, and a full vulva costume into a joyful, surreal sequence set to Camille Yarbrough's track Take Yo Praise, as identified by thedrum.com. The effect was neither clinical nor provocative in the conventional sense — it was celebratory, which was precisely the strategic provocation. Directed by Kim Gehrig through Somesuch, the work carried a distinct auteurist sensibility rather than the anonymous finish of a typical healthcare product film. The campaign received a Clapboard Score of 90 out of 100, reflecting its combination of strategic clarity, creative originality, and cultural impact across the United Kingdom and its initial Nordic launch markets.
Libresse grounded Viva la Vulva in proprietary consumer research before a single frame was shot. According to thedrum.com, Libresse research found that 44 percent of women felt embarrassed by their vulvas, and 68 percent did not know what their own vulva was. A further one in four had avoided medical appointments because of shame related to their intimate anatomy. These were not abstract cultural observations — they were direct barriers to the product category Libresse was entering with its intimate washes, liners, and wipes range.
The strategic insight was that category competitors were perpetuating the silence they claimed to address. Brands such as Femfresh and similar intimate wash products in the United Kingdom had historically relied on euphemism — flowers, soft lighting, and the deliberate avoidance of anatomical language — to communicate with consumers, as observed by creativepool.com and brandinginasia.com. Libresse and AMV BBDO identified that this approach reinforced shame rather than relieving it. Naming the vulva plainly and celebrating it visually was not a shock tactic but a logical response to research showing that ignorance and embarrassment were the core consumer problem.
The United Kingdom market context made this positioning particularly significant. In the UK, intimate care as a product segment sits within a broader healthcare and personal care category where consumer trust is built slowly and brand differentiation is difficult to sustain through product claims alone. Libresse's Live Fearless platform, established in 2013, had already demonstrated that cultural positioning could drive category relevance, according to caples.org. Viva la Vulva extended that logic from menstrual care into intimate care, using the same strategic framework — research-backed, taboo-confronting, emotionally direct — to open a new segment for the brand rather than simply defending an existing one.
Kim Gehrig directed Viva la Vulva through production company Somesuch, as reported by thedrum.com and caples.org. Gehrig's involvement is creatively significant. Her background in music video direction and her reputation for work that combines visual playfulness with emotional precision shaped every element of the film's aesthetic. The decision to commission a director associated with entertainment rather than healthcare advertising was itself a strategic statement about the kind of cultural space Libresse intended to occupy.
The film runs for three minutes — an unusual length for a product advertisement — and operates entirely as a music video built around the Camille Yarbrough track Take Yo Praise, as identified by thedrum.com. The vulva is never depicted literally. Instead, AMV BBDO and Gehrig constructed a visual language from objects: clamshells, halved fruit, folded origami, autumn leaves, and a performer in a full vulva costume. Each image is presented with confidence and warmth rather than clinical remove or deliberate shock. The cumulative effect, as characterised by Rebecca Stewart, Trends Editor at The Drum, writing on 27 November 2018, was a bold and joyful celebration of female anatomy that felt unlike anything the healthcare or intimate care categories had produced.
The production approach reflected a specific creative philosophy. By removing explicit imagery entirely and replacing it with metaphor and music, AMV BBDO created a film that could travel across broadcast and digital platforms in the United Kingdom and its Nordic launch markets without regulatory obstruction, while simultaneously producing the kind of emotional resonance that purely informational healthcare advertising rarely achieves. The work set a formal template — long-form, music-led, metaphor-driven — that would influence subsequent intimate care and femcare creative in the United Kingdom and internationally. Production credits beyond Kim Gehrig and Somesuch are not comprehensively documented in public sources for all roles on the campaign.
Viva la Vulva achieved more than five million organic video views in under two weeks with no paid media support, according to caples.org. That figure represents earned audience attention at a scale that most healthcare campaigns do not reach with substantial media budgets. A separate data point reported by caples.org found that 96 percent of social media comments on the campaign were positive, an unusually high sentiment ratio for content that addressed a subject historically treated as taboo in the United Kingdom and its Nordic launch markets.
The awards record is extensive and verified. Viva la Vulva won the Titanium Lion at Cannes Lions 2019, the Glass: The Lion for Change, two Gold Lions and one Silver Lion in Film, and Gold and Silver in Health and Wellness, along with 12 shortlists at the same festival, as documented by dandad.org and creativepool.com. At D&AD 2019, the campaign received a Black Pencil for Direction — one of the most selective distinctions in global advertising craft — as reported by dandad.org. The One Show 2019 awarded the campaign the Health and Wellness Grand Prix, as noted by caples.org and cresta-awards.com. The Caples Awards and Cresta Awards also recognised the work.
The Clapboard Score of 90 out of 100 reflects the campaign's verified performance across organic reach, sentiment, and the breadth of its industry recognition. No single award defines the result, but the combination of a Titanium Lion, a D&AD Black Pencil, and The One Show Grand Prix in Health and Wellness represents a convergence of jury recognition that few healthcare campaigns in the United Kingdom or elsewhere have matched.
Viva la Vulva is a 2018 healthcare advertising campaign created by AMV BBDO for Libresse. Released on 23 November 2018 across the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Norway, it is a three-minute music video that celebrates female anatomy through visual metaphor and the Camille Yarbrough track Take Yo Praise, according to thedrum.com.
Kim Gehrig directed Viva la Vulva through production company Somesuch, as reported by thedrum.com and caples.org. Gehrig's background in music video direction shaped the film's visual language, which uses shells, fruit, origami, and a vulva costume rather than explicit imagery to celebrate female anatomy across United Kingdom and Nordic markets.
Viva la Vulva won the Titanium Lion and Glass: The Lion for Change at Cannes Lions 2019, as documented by dandad.org. The campaign also received two Gold Lions and one Silver Lion in Film, Gold and Silver in Health and Wellness, and 12 shortlists at the same festival, making it one of the most-decorated healthcare campaigns of that year.
Libresse research found that 44 percent of women felt embarrassed by their vulvas and 68 percent did not know what their own vulva was, according to thedrum.com. A further one in four had avoided medical appointments because of intimate body shame. AMV BBDO used this data to position naming the vulva directly as a strategic and cultural necessity for the United Kingdom and Nordic markets.
Viva la Vulva achieved more than five million organic video views in under two weeks with no paid media support, according to caples.org. Additionally, 96 percent of social media comments were positive, as reported by caples.org. The campaign earned these results across the United Kingdom and its Nordic launch markets through editorial coverage and audience sharing alone.
Viva la Vulva received a Clapboard Score of 90 out of 100. The score reflects the campaign's verified organic reach of more than five million views, its 96 percent positive sentiment rate as reported by caples.org, and its convergence of industry recognition including a Cannes Titanium Lion, a D&AD Black Pencil for Direction, and The One Show Health and Wellness Grand Prix.
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