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Sexual wellness brands face the challenge of reversing the stigma of silence and talking openly, perhaps for the first time, about intimate health. We worked with lubricant brand Into the Wylde to develop brand storytelling that addresses the sense of disconnection women feel when experiencing discomfort. Flipping a category that markets shame and embarrassment—our brand messaging was about connecting women with themselves and the curiosity and playfulness that can be lost when experiencing sensitivities, as well as the societal stigma that goes with it…Packaging design in London is never dull.
Client: Into the Wylde
Deliverables: Verbal identity, tone of voice, copywriting, brand positioning and strategy
Creatives: Siena Dexter – Strategy, copywriting. Illustration and packaging design: Claire Hartley Studios, Photography: Tara Liondaris
year: 2019
Press: Packaging of the World
Kathie Bishop – a medical herbalist specialising in female intimate health, founded Into the Wylde with the mission to create a lubricant brand for women, made specifically with women’s physical needs in mind, and not just from a product point of view. A vulva is not a penis, it has very different needs, and mimicking natural lubricant is about more than just making things slippy.
A female lubricant product must work on a psychological, emotional level – connecting with women visually and verbally through the brand design and communication. And so, Into the Wylde set out to cross the slippery category of fem-care with a lubricant that gets women’s needs, inside and out.
Our brand tone of voice and messaging was inspired by Founder Kathie’s straight-talking tone and journey to creating the brand. Suffering for years with thrush, Kathie found the condition disconnected her from her intimate expression. The tone of voice had to approach sexuality in a gentler way, showing respect to the emotional and psychological complexities of female intimacy – all that with sophistication which fitted our visual identity, and a playfulness which articulated being ‘into the wylde’ – the freedom of connecting with a natural flow. The brand tagline ‘reawaken play’ and social hashtags ‘#VulvaLovinCare’ and ‘#FreeTheV’ all communicate the brand’s message of connection, natural vulva health, and between-the-sheets fun.
Creating the brand messaging highlighted some very real issues around fem-care messaging – we wanted to be progressive, forward thinking, even bold, but can we really say ‘vulva’ on the pack? and will we sound like a GUM clinic doctor if we do? Our messaging had to be direct, we didn’t want to shy away from talking about female anatomy, but if we were honest about how women communicate, the word ‘downstairs’ is far more likely to be used than ‘vulva’ in everyday conversation.
We navigated uncharted paths of how to say natural lubrication without saying ‘moist’ or ‘wet’ (too gross, too X rated), and whether yoni, vulva or just ‘down-under’ are best suited to describing where the product goes (we went with the latter). After 6 years of development, and almost 2 years of brand creation, Into the Wylde’s ‘Wylde One’ water-based lubricant is finally set to launch on Monday 13th April, and we hope will resonate with sexually active women of all ages, reawakening play and lubricated lovin’.
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