Painter’s imagery used to put girls’ plight put on the canvas

IN 1928, Belgian surrealist Rene Magritte painted a pipe. Below it, he painted, Ceci n’est pas une pipe (This is not a pipe).

“The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it!” he later said, “And yet, could you stuff the pipe? No, it’s just a representation. So if I’d written, ‘This is a pipe’, I’d have been lying!”

M&C Saatchi Abel uses this style of self-referential cleverness in its effective ad in support of the Dis-Chem Foundation’s One Million Comforts campaign.

“This is not a sanitary pad,” the print ad reads matter-offactly, “but that won’t stop 1.2 million women from using it as one.”

Here’s how the concept emerged: A team of female interns was researching the sanitary care category and stumbled across the One Million Comforts initiative, intended to facilitate the free distribution of donated sanitary pads to girls in need.

Their reading revealed that, in the absence of sanitary towels, women in rural areas often resorted to using newspapers, rags and towels when they were menstruating.

Girls also missed up to 50 days of school a year because they lacked adequate protection.

What better way, thought the team, to awaken readers to the unpleasant and often embarrassing reality of this widespread situation than by drawing atten- tion to the very medium they were holding in their hands: the newspaper.

The aim is to drive the public to donate at least 1 million sanitary towels between mid-September and mid-October, through drop-bins in 88 Dis-Chem stores.

Bridget Johnson, creative partner at M&C Saatchi Abel Gauteng, says: “Our interns were struck by the scale of the problem.

“They couldn’t believe that, in this day and age, with technology and everything the world has overcome, there are girls who miss school because they can’t get what they need to deal with menstruation. They were moved to help.” – Staff Reporter