In the pantheon of mythical creatures, one character has been curiously lost to history, though not to herstory—the Period Fairy, who visits girls when they get their first period.
HelloFlo tells the Period Fairy's story in this short mockumentary featuring a girl who investigates the mythology, and gets the Tooth Fairy, Cupid, Santa Claus and more to explain their colleague's mysterious exit from the scene.
The video was a collaboration between HelloFlo founder and CEO Naama Bloom and writer Sara Saedi, who also wrote HelloFlo's "Postpartum: The Musical," which broke in February. (A different team of writer/directors, Pete Marquis and Jamie McCelland, worked on HelloFlo's earlier "Camp Gyno" and "First Moon Party" virals.)
"I really wanted to play with the idea of a female superhero who helped girls with their first period, and [Saedi] had the idea to create the mystery around the Period Fairy," Bloom tells AdFreak. "To me, this spot is very different from the others because it's not one punch line after another. It's funny but also very sweet and more endearing than the others."
HelloFlo has a knack for finding great young actresses, and the girl here—discovered by Wulf Casting—is fantastic. "She reminded us of Rachel Maddow, and we thought that was a perfect archetype for our feminist-in-training, Lilian Dyer," says Bloom.
The hashtag is #MakeItVagical, a word that pops up early in the video and gets an animated treatment on-screen. (It's also reminiscent of the "First Moon Party" ad, in which a "vagician" made an appearance.)
"Once we added the animation in the beginning on the word vagical, we thought it would be funny to keep playing with it," Bloom says. "Since the idea is that the Period Fairy and the HelloFlo Period Starter Kit are both there to make the first period experience positive, it just seemed right to carry it forward. It wasn't a hashtag at first, it was a tagline. One early viewer saw the video and tagline and then sent me an email in which she'd turned it into a hashtag. Once I saw it, it made perfect sense."
HelloFlo has become the poster child for small brands doing big viral video content. But Bloom says there's no great mystery to its success. "When I think about creating video content," she says, "the most important element for HelloFlo is that we have strong female characters who are both relatable and culturally aware."
CREDITS
Client: HelloFlo
Production Company: Senza Pictures
Writer: Sara Saedi
Producer: Brandi Savitt
Casting: Wulf Casting
Music: Found Objects
Director of Photography: Mark Schwartzbard
Editor: David Fishel
Art Director: Ally Nesmith
Costume Designer: Deirdra Govan
Sound Mixer: Wil Masisak
Production Coordinator: Julia Brady
Hair, Makeup: Rebecca Levine
Script Supervisor: Elizabeth Stern
Gaffer: G.T. Womack
Key Grip: Ben Hunt
Swing/Driver: Joe Chiofalo
Set Costumer/Tailor: Olivia Fuks
Assistant Editor: Elizabeth Theis
Camera Assistant: Noelle Kandigian
Boom Operator: Matt King
Assistant Art Director: Nelson Mestril
Production Assistant: Jordan Floyd