Menstrual challenger DivaCup is highlighting its planet-saving progressive message as it moves from simple awareness of its product to bringing its brand values to a generation.

The “Freedom, Period” campaign uses real DivaCup users as spokespeople, a first for the brand, who enlists their feedback on things like how using a DivaCup instead of disposable menstrual products can help contribute to a more sustainable future.

It is also a first glimpse at a future trajectory the brand has set for itself. This has meant, according to Roslyn Griner, Diva International’s VP of brand and marketing, continuing to put DivaCup’s values of advocacy, female empowerment and sustainability front and centre.

“Today, Generation Z are really wanting to hear authenticity and really raw stories that I think only our brand can tell,” Griner says. This is Griner’s first campaign with the brand since joining in June, coming off of eight years in marketing and brand leadership roles at Reitmans.

There are 30- and 60-second creative assets, and interviews with the customers, with social channels being used to show the behind the scenes from the campaign. While it’s it’s focusing primarily on Instagram and TikTok, Facebook, she says, remains an important customer service channels for consumers looking for information about DivaCup, when it comes to product adoption.

According to the brand, this outreach is part of embarking on a transformation of all its consumer touchpoints. The latest campaign, devised by Mookai, was intended to run in August, but was delayed in order to give the brand more time to onboard its new digital agency, Make It Bloom, and overhaul its online presence to match the new campaign.

“We definitely have great brand awareness, but we wanted to translate our core organizational values and speak to a new generation,” says Diva International’s CEO and founder Carinne Chambers-Saini, who tells strategy it also just joined TikTok this past September, part of an effort to connect emotionally with consumers through music.

The musical component for the campaign also includes a partnership with eclectic Toronto singer songwriter Ralph, who has crafted a Spotify playlist for Diva. Available on the brand’s Spotify account, it is designed to help celebrate the power of the body and menstruation.

Diva’s status as an alternative to “traditional” menstrual products has typically attracted a more progressive consumer, and the new campaign makes that element of the brand even more apparent. But legacy brands have been catching up on the values front since DivaCup first came to the mass market a decade ago, be it Always’ “#LikeAGirl” platform in 2015 to the recent announcement that Shoppers Drug Mart had partnered with P&G’s Always and Kimberly Clark’s U by Kotex, as well as the Ontario government, to donate of free period products to high school students across Ontario.  

To differentiate itself from those big CPGs, Chambers-Saini says it comes down to Diva International’s brand values and history, not just in gender equality, but in sustainability, menstrual equity and body autonomy.

“We are authentic in our commitment to create an impact in this space,” Chambers-Saini says. For example, the DivaCares philanthropic division has a stated commitment to improving people’s lives through education, advocacy and access to menstruation products and ending the worldwide plight of “period poverty.”

It has also helped produce Pandora’s Box, a feature-length documentary about menstruation taboos, a global journey exploring cultural and social subjugation, produced and directed by a primarily female crew. In an internal effort to dispel stigma, the company announced last month that it would be offering any employees who menstruate up to 12 paid days off per year for period- or endometriosis-related reasons.