An advertising campaign for tampons is rejected by US television networks for daring to include the word vagina
Just don't say vagina: the acceptable version of the tampon ad.
For years, advertising for tampons and "sanitary products" have been shrouded in nebulous euphemism. So what happens when a US tampon-maker drops the coy messaging and goes straight for the jugular (so to speak)? Its ad gets banned by the major US television networks for mentioning the word vagina.
Even when the company substituted "down there" for vagina, two of the networks still wouldn't run the ad, so the company was forced to drop the idea altogether. That provoked Amanda Hess, author of The Sexist blog, to observe: "Now, the commercial contains no direct references to female genitalia – you know, the place where the fucking tampon goes."
An executive for Kimberly-Clark, the owner of Kotex, notes that US TV networks have no such compunction about references to "erectile dysfunction" in prime-time ads for Viagra and Ciallis.
The New York Times reports that the campaign – produced by the advertising agency JWT, part of WPP – for tampon brand Kotex was "a bit too frank" for US television:
more . . .
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/richard-adams-blog/2010/mar/16/tampon-vagina-kotex-advertising