When people ask me why I do marketing, I always say that I chose to become a marketeer because it is the ideal combination between my skills and my interests. If a try, I can say that pretty convincingly. It is, however, a lie. The true reason why I chose to go into marketing is that ‘pain in the ass’, which is what I am really called to be, is not an official job description. (Yet, I have to add. Is not an official job description yet. I am working very hard to make that a publicly recognised job description). Marketing is just the next best thing and I assumed that it would be a lot of fun and would challenge me enough to keep me interested for at least a couple of years. Little did I know how right I was going to be about that. It is fun and it is challenging. But to some extent I underestimated how fun and challenging it was going to be because never, in my wildest dreams, did I think that one day I would be sitting in a room with four priests and talk to them about periods and tampons.
Having had the great fortune of growing up in a family in which no topic was ever considered taboo, I am generally pretty confident when it comes to talking about periods. Also, the universe trained me well because it always sends me the most gorgeous physicians if I need to seek medical advice about any issues concerning my reproductive system. But truth be told, that day in the vicarage I nearly chickened out. After we had had our discussion about whether the church would participate in Croydon Pride (another thing I put on the table) and one of the fathers asked if there were any other issues that I wanted to address, I spoke very quietly. In fact, I spoke so quietly that I had to repeat myself because nobody had understood me the first-time round. But then I took a deep breath and then said the words I had prepared the day before.
‘I know there was an idea out there that we could focus or next foodbank collection on female hygiene products and my colleague and I thought we could use this opportunity to run a campaign that draws attention to the problem of period poverty. However, I really don’t know how to frame this topic in a way that speaks to men, so I’ll need your support and especially your ideas.’ Then I sat back and prayed for a speedy death. And while I was still waiting for the earth to open up and swallow me, I witnessed what I’d describe as a medium-sized miracle: the priests took the topic and ran with it. ‘Wonderful’, one of the Fathers said, ‘that is such an important topic’. Another Father shared with us a story about how he had previously lived with two women and had one evening diagnosed himself with toxic shock syndrome. As he had lived to tell the tale, we knew that he had obviously been wrong, but I was not too sure if we all know on how many levels.
The ideas started coming in. We could aim for a certain amount of hygiene products. (Agreed!) We could have some sort of thermometer that showed people how many hygiene products we had already collected. (Wonderful!) The thermometer could be a giant tampon that got more and more soaked in red/blue (there was some disagreement over that) liquid. (No way!) We could be brave and not only end period poverty but also break the taboo surrounding periods. (Way to go, Fathers!) And then came the mother of all ideas: the following Saturday, after morning prayer, the Fathers were going to go shopping for female hygiene products – in clerical outfits – to show that buying tampons was nothing to be ashamed of. I offered to come, but they declined. They wanted to go by themselves and it was clear that I was faced with a group of men on a mission.
One month later, we had smashed our target of collecting 100 boxes of female hygiene products and had ended up with 278 instead. We had run an entire campaign on the subject with one post getting more than 10k views. The shopping trip was such a success that it made its way into a sermon. One priest – totally unaware of his own fame in South London – came to me in slight distress and told me that a woman he had never seen approached him at Croydon Pride (we made that happen as well) to tell him that she had seen his thoughtful period poverty video and thanked him for speaking about the subject. All the priests at the church now know the difference between tampons, pads and panty liners and none of them flinch any longer if asked to take a photo with a pile of female hygiene products. For some time, I was convinced I was the new Messiah – I could not turn water into wine, but I could turn pictures and words into tampons and pads. Also, I am still working to make ‘pain in the ass’ an official job description because I feel that this is what I have been called to do. But until I can make this happen, I rest assured that being a marketeer is not only a very close 2nd best option, but also one that I would choose again and again.
