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A perfect example of missing your target market by miles.

It wasn’t obvious what was being promoted on this tv ad: an attractive young woman has managed to get her dress caught in the lift doors, and we’re afforded an excellent view of her underwear while the dress is being dragged up by the lift. The man in front of her is too busy collecting his dropped papers to notice and she manages to cover her confusion just in time.

So far, so funny. Gratuitous semi-nakedness of a rather tiresome kind, perhaps, but well-played.  The ad plays on: the woman is now at the watercooler laughing lustily with her friend about her mishap and then..oh dear!…she has accidentally peed her pants! Or so we assume, since we’ve now heard about the product and she’s making this rather odd ‘whoops!‘ gesture.

I actually held my hand out to shield myself from the tv, my recoil was so strong. It took me a moment to work out why, and then I realised it was the intense 1950s-style girlie coyness that nauseated me. That vacuous “Oops, I’m not very bright and I just inexplicably dropped my knickers‘ soft-porn look – wide-eyed with fingertips to mouth. Putting that together with incontinence is just…..wrong… Like a really misguided Golden Shower flick.

Which leaves the question ringing in the air: who on earth do they think they are talking to? Let’s just work this one through. It won’t take long.

It’s mostly men who will enjoy the semi-naked lady: as my Twitter friend Dan helpfully offered, “Peeing herself or not, she is pretty cute.” Thank you, Dan. I’m guessing it was a man who created this ad, but I’d challenge any man to use a pantie-liner effectively. Me, I’m not that interested at gazing at women’s bodies, shapely or otherwise. [And oh, god, can you stop forcing me to look at unshapely men's bodies? That's you, Boots]

So if not men, clearly women. Young women, apparently – I doubt either woman was over 25.  Do young women need incontinence pads? Well, I’d have to say, if I were launching a new incontinence pad I wouldn’t be putting machines for them in night-clubs. Bladder weakness usually comes from pelvic floor weakness, most likely as a result of childbirth or menopause. From the very generous view we got of her torso there was little sign of either on our girl. Perhaps she’s doing keigel exercises every day at yoga class.

Not absolute, of course – there will be a fair few women with bladder weakness after their first child, but that’s still not much of a market. The bulk of the market is going to be the older women, with both childbirth and menopause to deal with.

So here we are. The bulk of the market for these incontinence pads is probably women over 40 who have had children. Tena must know this. They’ve looked at the market stats and said “What do these women need to see, what are their aspirations?  These women who endured every scatological game their children played and who now wait for their husbands’ mid-life crises to play out?” And the answer came to them loud and clear: “What they want to see, what they want to be… is a shapely young woman acting like a 1950s soft-porn bimbo. Yes, by Jingo!”

Genius.

Well, there you go: I can never now buy these pads because I associate them with creepy male fantasies. I just have to hope my 10 years of free-weight squats will pay off.  Now – you create an advert that has a dozen female SAS soldiers and the sergeant is handing out incontinence pant-liners, saying “Load these properly, now – there ain’t nuthin’ cute about peeing yourself, ladies” – that would make me laugh. That, if I should need them, would definitely make me buy.

Update 19/6: I’m firmly told that “Light loss of urine when laughing or sporting has nothing to do with age.” Very true – we’ve probably all done it at least once, else there wouldn’t be the expression “peed myself laughing.” But with ordinary pantie-liners in common use I think Tena are delusional to think there’s a youth market. Perhaps they’re trying to create a new inferiority-complex in young women, on a par with Dove’s assertion that we should be worrying about soft armpits.

Tagged as: adverts