Creative Directors Cut: Why the new Tena ad is a triumph for menopausal women everywhere

Creative Directors Cut: Why the new Tena ad is a triumph for menopausal women everywhere
Humanity and humour created from great insight

Humanity and humour created from great insight

CEO, Dark Horses

Ok, at the risk of going all girl-crush on this, the new Tena ad absolutely nails it in every single way.

It’s smart, candid, intuitive and the deserved winner of Channel 4’s Diversity in Advertising Award.

Menopause deserves this level of humanity and humour.

Written by a team a long way off being menopausal themselves, it beautifully demonstrates the power of truly incredible research insight.

The narrative is built around the most evocative truth for me - that this period of huge hormonal imbalance tends to happen at the very same time as our children are going through puberty.

Who hasn’t put toothpaste on a corker of a zit? (yeah, I’m old, I’m menopausal, and I call them ‘zits’. Get over it).

Out of nowhere so desperate for a wee that if you don’t go, there’ll be a terrible accident? Check.

Pulling a sprouted-from-nowhere hair like a piece of wire from your chin/cheek/nose? Yup.

Hair-drying out-of-control armpit sweat in the loos? You betcha.

Midnight gardening because you’re wide awake?

I’m more of a on-hands-and-knees-crawling-round-the-bathroom-cleaning-the-floor girl.

Utterly irrational crying for nothing and everything? Oh yes.

Asleep with your head in the fridge? Not me, yet. But I’ve heard stories from friends.

‘Pelvic floor betrayals’ from laughing/coughing/jump-scares? Oh god, so very much yes.

A sneaky shag that results in the roast getting burnt? Damn right.

The casting is spot on. It’s beautifully shot. Oh, and Frazey Ford as the soundtrack completes it.

This film is so pitch perfect it makes me cry.

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