So much technological progress has been made, and yet, tampon machines have been stuck in the past. These coin-operated, windowless metal boxes haven’t evolved in 60+ years, which is problematic since they serve an extremely important purpose. So why haven’t these machines been updated? The culprit: period stigma and the gender gap in tech. And that couldn’t have been more apparent when I stumbled upon a broken pad and tampon machine in the trade show floor bathroom at SXSW 2018.
I resolved to change that when I invented Hooha, a smart tampon machine that dispenses free tampons. We launched our prototype on International Women’s Day a year later at SXSW 2019. Since then, Hooha has been written about in the Wall Street Journal, Bustle, and Adweek, nominated for a Webby, and received an honorable mention in Fast Company’s World Changing Ideas awards.
To make pads and tampons more accessible in public restrooms, Hooha dispenses FREE tampons. You just text the phone number on the machine, and out pops a tampon.
Hooha is equipped with smart sensors for ease of use. The first sensor tracks how much product is left in the machine. When stock is low, Hooha sends a notification to the facility manager to restock the machine. Hooha also features jam-prevention technology to ensure a tampon is dispensed every time.
Hooha has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Bustle, Adweek, Campaign and CBS.
Coin-operated tampon machines are windowless metal boxes, so we designed Hooha to be bold, sleek, and hygienic. We added a window to fight period stigma and make it easier to see the product quantities inside. Through SMS, we communicate to users in a fun, approachable way. We even hid a tampon string in the logo—a fun easter egg meant to make people smile.
During the launch, we installed Hooha machines throughout SXSW including Female Quotient’s Equality Lounge.
Nuts. They make a great snack, but they’re far from the go-to gift on Valentine’s Day. Squirrel Brand wanted to change this with the launch of Ruby Royale, an indulgent new nut blend. But in an oversaturated category on a holiday steeped in tradition, how do you change people’s minds about nuts? You crash the gates.
To disrupt the category, we not only needed to challenge established Valentine’s gift-giving traditions but gate-crash the conventionality of the holiday itself. In short, we needed to prove that there’s more to Valentine’s Day than tired greeting cards, waxy chocolates, and traditional couples.
To flip the script, we called on world-renowned drag artist, Latrice Royale, to help us bring to life our message of indulgence, inclusivity, and nonconformity. Via video content, the campaign boldly, unapologetically, and hilariously served up new ways to celebrate Valentine’s Day by encouraging users to gift Ruby Royale to whomever they wanted: their mailman, their side piece, their OTHER side piece. The campaign picked up 101MM impressions was featured across social, digital and Amazon, generating sales, awareness, and purpose-driven messaging.
Latrice Royale became the first drag artist to be featured on QVC pitching a product dressed in drag.
Toilet paper is an essential human need and it's free in public restrooms. But for 50% of the population, an equally critical item is missing: tampons. And in the rare case they are available, they usually cost money. To make matters worse, they’re dispensed from archaic, coin-operated machines that are rarely stocked and usually broken.
So, to raise awareness about the lack of access to period products in public restrooms, Huge and PERIOD partnered together to build a coin-operated toilet paper dispenser (designed to work like a pad and tampon dispenser) and installed it into a men’s restroom to show men what it feels like to have to pay for a basic human need with an obsolete form of payment. The purpose of the stunt was to generate conversation about pad and tampon accessibility in public restrooms.
For men who didn't have coins on them, the toilet paper dispenser included an alternative feature: a tweet-to-dispense mechanism that required men to tweet a message about period equality using #FreeThePeriod in order to dispense the toilet paper.
With zero media spend, PERIOD launched the video on its website and social channels on International Women’s Day (March 8, 2020) and generated 1.2M organic views within the first 24 hours. The grassroots campaign was picked up by NowThis, Glamour, Feminist, Adweek, Women’s March and Global Citizen. The campaign received 81.2M impressions, generated hundreds of thousands of comments, and more importantly got both men and women talking about pad and tampon accessibility in public restrooms.
Our campaign took home two Shorty Social Good Awards for Gender Equality and best Pro Bono Campaign. Shorty Awards
When it comes to basic human needs, innovation tends to stop at the women’s restroom door. To highlight the need for more innovative solutions for pad and tampon machines, we created an OOH campaign that called out coin-operated pad and tampon machines by placing stickers on them. We pasted our stickers throughout SXSW 2019. The stickers were meant to make people aware of the problem and featured a link called innovationstopshere.com that drives users to Hooha’s website.
To generate conversation about menstruation, Hooha partnered with #HappyPeriod, a non-profit organization that provides menstrual products to low-income and homeless communities, to create a campaign that shows the horrifying things that can happen to people who menstruate. The campaign reimagined popular horror movie titles by adding a fun period-related spin.
In 2019, Hooha debuted internationally at Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. Hooha machines were installed throughout the conference for festival goers to beta test. We also partnered with Amazon Web Services and gave two presentations at the CLX Roundtables. The campaign featured a mix of OOH, print, and social media.
