Female Media Opps: Flex loses top marketer, launches campaign (Score 61)

After only around a year as The Flex Company's brand, communications and creative VP, Ally Basak parted ways with the company this month. She is now the marketing VP for Mynd Management. In Basak's absense, I expect Flex needs more marketing assistance than normal; both seller and agency readers should contact if you haven't yet done so. Creative and brand VP Maira Almeida may be handling these duties for now, but we will let you know what we confirm.

Flex also has a new, gender-neutral menstrual product campaign, which features seemingly unlikely spokespeople such as  an elderly aunt, a father of daughters and a woman uncomfortable with private products. Created by recently-tapped creative AOR VIA, this campaign is designed to break stigmas about who can and should be able to talk about period products. It also pushes the barriers of what typical menstrual product commercials should look like. The campaign will continue to run throughout the summer on TV, digital, social platforms and email, marking its ongoing marketing strategy expansion past social media. Since the ads will stick around for the rest of the summer, sellers able to get Flex in front of Gen-Z should contact soon to secure last-minute ad dollars.

According to Pathmatics, the company has spent roughly $1.9m on digital ads YTD, only around half of the roughly $3.8m it spent within the same 2020 timeframe. Flex's estimated full-year 2020 spend of $5m was up 5x that of $1m in 2019. So far this year, the company has earned ~251.5m digital impressions via YouTube (70%), Instagram (21%) and Facebook (9%) ads. 

Flex has also, per Magellan, aired 46 podcast ads within the past 12 months. The company tends to air podcast ads during female-oriented shows.

Hopefully, Flex's spend will pick back up with the new campaign; however, remember its leaders want its marketing to expand beyond social media to use additional channels such as TV, email and additional other digital. This could mean the company is starting to target millennials as well as its traditional Gen-Z audience. Flex's target demographic flexes to be inclusive, but it does have a female-oriented target demographic since most period-havers identify as female. The company faces competition from other period product companies such as Lola, Tampax and Playtex. Compared to these brands, Flex's inclusion of non-cisgender period-havers sets it apart to social justice-oriented consumers; by including these people, the company also has a wider audience.

Agency & martech readers - You may still be able to secure PR, media, digital analytics and/or social media management partnerships considering how recently Flex hired a new creative AOR and how much additional assistance the company may need in the absense of a top marketer.