2025 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Since their beginning in 2013, the global period intimates brand Knix has been on a mission to empower menstruators to have nothing to hide. Despite Knix’s continuous efforts to normalize periods, they’re still taboo in sports – menstruators fear leaking while being active.

This period shame is so strong that recent studies show that 1 in 3 menstruators above the age of 13 (31%) in Canada will skip sports during their period. This phenomenon is true across the globe, where 1 in 2 teens skips sports to hide their period – in the United States, Australia, and Europe.

To normalize periods in sports, Knix launched the “Sport Your Period” initiative, with two specific goals in mind. To instigate conversations about periods in sports globally and to empower teens to keep practicing the sports they love,
periods or not.

Periods have always been hidden, which perpetuates the taboo. To fight the period stigma, they have decided to make periods more visible than ever.

In sports, there are many injuries, which means there’s a lot of blood. Athletes wear their blood like it’s a badge of honor, and the media glorifies this. Except for period blood. Athletes who leak through their sporting uniforms are
publicly called disgusting.

So, they’ve turned this badge of shame into a badge of honor, by designing a symbol that menstruators sport when they’re active during their period. This way, the brand empower athletes to stay in sports during their period without fearing leakage. By wearing the decal on their skin, they’re telling the world upfront, loud and proud, that they’re menstruating.

To launch this initiative, the brand partnered with the people on this planet who are the most “at risk” to be seen leaking: world-class professional athletes. Anytime they compete during their period, they sport the period badge to show that the fear of leaking will never stop them from practicing the sport they love – even if the whole world is watching them – and encouraging every menstruator to feel the same.

They also opened recruitment to any menstruator who wants to become an ambassador for “Sport Your Period”, to tackle the taboo around periods in sports once and for all.

To accurately symbolize periods, the design of the decal takes the shape of a red blood cell and the color of period blood. To suit any athlete of any sport, the period badge is designed to be sweat-proof, non-obstructive, and
visible on every skin tone.

To get the message across, the agency purposely designed the decal to be unbranded and worn directly on the athletes’ skin (not their uniform), to bypass official sponsorship rules in any major sporting event and professional league, making periods visible on the world stage.

By doing so, Knix became the first-ever sponsor of menstruating athletes.

Its simplicity of fabrication makes the decal easy to produce on a large scale, allowing us to distribute it to menstruators around the globe who want to
sport their period.

With $0 spent, the agency made “Sport Your Period” a top conversation by earning close to 300M impressions in the media. Despite the fact that the news was mainly focused on Canada, it got picked up and garnered the interest of media in the US, Australia, the UK, and Italy.

It also generated hundreds of thousands of positive reactions on social media. Not only did the agency recruit more athletes and ambassadors to join the movement, but “Sport Your Period” expanded to schools nationwide, empowering teens to
stay in sports.

Credits

Chief Creative Officer: Aaron Starkman
Chief Strategy Officer: Sean McDonald
Executive Creative Director: Xavier Blais
Writer: Andrée-Anne Hallé
Art Director: Patrick Seymour
Designer: Margot Brejon de Lavergnée, Janila Dargan
Motion Designer: Ignacio Florez
Print Producer: Scott Russell, Jonathan Cesar, Frederick Bailleul
Broadcast Producer (in-house): Chantal Wakil, Katia Dupuy
Lead Strategist (Mandatory for each respective office): Pascal Routhier
Strategist: Anastasia Collet
Account Services: Mélanie Châteauneuf, Gabrielle Bergeron, Noémie Trottier
Brand Narrative: Kristel Dupont, Mégane Landry, Chenda McKissick, Kaitlyn
Vian, Maya Ventresca, Janvi Singh
Client Supervisor: Emily Scarlett, Deniz Melen
Editor: Étienne Bergeron
Sound Design: Circonflex – Craig Murdock, Martin Boisselle
Production House: Santo Proyecto
Producer: Arturo Fincowsky
Line producer: Alejandro Rosas
Director of Photography: Alejandro Guemez
Photographer: Arturo Fincowsky, Luis Silva