A new campaign from Opella, Sanofi’s consumer health unit, is a royal flush.
Quite literally: Supporting Opella’s Dulcolax laxative, the Portugal-based campaign sees a diverse series of princesses perching primly on toilets, with the goal of breaking the taboos that may make girls and women feel embarrassed to talk openly about needing to make a bowel movement or go in public, potentially leading to constipation.
The “Pooping Princesses” are now on display across social media and in more than 200 digital out-of-home placements across Portugal. In various images, as compiled in a campaign launch video, princesses of all races and body types sit on toilets while clad in ornate green ballgowns and decked out in sparkly tiaras and other jewelry. On Instagram, users can access an augmented reality filter that morphs them into one of the royal toilet-goers.
The imagery was created with the help of Adobe’s generative artificial intelligence. According to Dogura Kozonoe, chief creative officer at MRM Brazil, the AI model first had to be tweaked to produce the diversity that Dulcolax and the agency were hoping to achieve.
“While creating this campaign, we discovered that even AI got the poo taboo, so we partnered with Adobe to help create better inputs and change the way generative AI imagines princesses pooping—opening the diversities of race, size, and a variety of other factors for the princess characters behind this campaign,” Kozonoe said in a statement sent to Fierce Pharma Marketing.
He added, “This idea gives us the incredible opportunity to demystify stereotypes behind perfection and princess-like behaviors that are imparted on young girls.”
The campaign arrives after a survey commissioned by Dulcolax found that many women in Portugal faced stigma around pooping as young girls—including the idea that it’s “dirty”—that affects their bathroom habits to this day, with more than 1 million between the ages of 18 and 34 saying that those internalized taboos still keep them from using the bathroom when they need it.
Many of the women surveyed said they wait to get home before going No. 2, and they reported feeling the bowel-blocking embarrassment most acutely when on a romantic date while using public transportation or in social situations outside the home. A quarter of the respondents said they still feel embarrassed talking about bowel movements, and more than 75% reported having experienced constipation before—which can indeed be caused by ignoring the urge to go when you need to.
In addition to the out-of-home digital images and social media blast, Dulcolax and MRM Brazil also collaborated with Weber Shandwick to put out a book about the stigma-busting princesses. “The Princess and the Poo” follows the royals as they candidly announce their need to defecate while participating in a variety of scenarios, from giving a speech to taking a yoga class to going deep-sea diving.