ALWAYS | INTIMATE WORDS | 2015
There Was No Word For It, So They Made One / ALWAYS "INTIMATE WORDS"
If you don't have the words, you can't describe your symptoms. If you can't describe your symptoms, you can't get diagnosed. The indigenous women of Oaxaca had no words to talk about their own bodies.
The problem
In Zapotec communities in Oaxaca, Mexico, cervical cancer was the number one cause of death among women. The reason wasn't the severity of the disease, it was the lack of words. The Zapotec language had no words for the uterus, ovaries, or vagina. Cultural taboos had stripped women of the very language they needed to talk about their own bodies.
The insight
Not having the words isn't just a vocabulary problem, it means being shut out of healthcare entirely. Here, Always's message of "women's confidence" becomes a matter of life and death. Leo Burnett Mexico brought together linguists, doctors, and women from the community to take this on.
The idea
What the team created wasn't an ad, it was a book: "Diidx xgáatz" (Intimate Words). They developed new names for women's organs that didn't exist in Zapotec, making them linguistically accurate and culturally acceptable, and put them together with illustrations and explanations. An ad agency compiled a dictionary.
What happened
It won the Grand Prix in the Health category at Cannes Lions 2015, the first time a Mexican ad had ever achieved this. The book was actually distributed to the community, and for the first time, women were able to describe their own bodies to doctors.
Afterthought
I'm not even sure this counts as advertising. But that's exactly why it moves me so much. It put the power of a brand to work exactly where it was needed most. Just creating words, that alone saved lives.
Awards
- Cannes Lions Grand Prix 2015
Featured in
- The People Who Invented Words That Didn't ExistFive projects that had to design a notation system before they could write a single line of copy.
