Enduring client-agency relationships are a rarity in promoting. Between 1987 and 2020, the common size of those partnerships has steadily declined from seven years to lower than three, in keeping with The Bedford Group.
Shopper care model Essity, proprietor of Libresse, Bodyform, Tena and Knix, has bucked this pattern alongside Omnicom-owned artistic company AMV BBDO, with 2024 marking the duo’s 10-year anniversary.
Over the course of a decade, the Essity-AMV BBDO collaboration has yielded taboo-busting work in classes from menstrual care to incontinence. The connection even inspired Essity to carry up a mirror to its core enterprise values, pivoting its company objective to “breaking boundaries” within the well being and hygiene class.
“These previous 10 years have given us a really excessive degree of belief,” Tuomas Yrjölä, president of worldwide model, innovation and sustainability at Essity, advised Adweek. “There’s a readability between us each, a shared language and a shared imaginative and prescient on the significance of name objective and breaking boundaries.”
He added: “All that drives velocity and effectivity, we don’t must debate or begin once more every time it involves deciding on a technique. We are able to focus all our efforts on pushing for excellent artistic work.”
Past serving to the enterprise outline its core objective, Essity and AMV’s longstanding relationship has yielded different fruit, together with a gross sales bump. In Q3 of 2023, the enterprise reported a internet gross sales enhance of 8.5% to $3.9 billion. It’s additionally bulked up AMV’s trophy cupboard, with constant accolades for the pair at awards exhibits together with Cannes Lions, D&AD and the Clios.
In an business more and more preoccupied with short-termism and venture work in favor of the normal AOR mannequin, AMV BBDO and Essity’s relationship provides a window into what can occur when manufacturers and businesses stick issues out.
Making ‘Blood Regular’
One of the best recognized stigma-shattering work from the duo got here in 2017 with “Blood Regular,” a marketing campaign for sanitary model Libresse (often known as Bodyform within the U.Ok.), which switched out blue liquid for actual interval blood.