Ads on Pads was created after innovation and pitching competition SYNTRE had inside of the team. Task for it was to ideate a product or a service and pitch it to the team. This way team would practice pitching and performing, share ideas with each other and practice innovation. Me as a creative person had many ideas for this, but lot of them I felt to be too useless or not valuable. In the time my social media had a lot of content from a company called Free Water. Free Water is a water bottle company, who give out free water in USA. The way they keep it profitable is that they sell advertisement placement on the bottle for companies. The idea of providing free and needed products to consumers and funding the operations by selling advertisement placement was delighting. But since Finland has one of the cleanest tap waters, this idea wouldn’t work. Therefore, the ideation went into thinking what would be something the consumers need but that they shouldn’t pay for. After a while came the idea of female period pads. Since periods are something, females get for biological reasons, it would make sense to get the needed sanitation products for it free. After looking more into the idea, I got to know that in USA many universities already provide their students with free period pads. Also, in Europe countries have taken part of this movement of providing free menstrual products for woman. Iceland and France are mostly known from this in Europe. After researching even more there was an article about a secondary school in Finland who made it so that the students would be given the menstrual products for period of time as a test. From that experiment that was made they got very positive feedback from the students. So, after research came clear what would be the product but how to sell advertisement on it, was the question after it. As period pads are small on size, but they are flat and therefore perfect for stickers. Making it so that the consumer doesn’t even realize that they are subject to advertisement when they get the pad. Many from our team did criticize the advertisement idea on the pad, since it is really small and only visible for the user small time. But to that argument many do read something while they are on the toilet. For example, phone, magazine or etiquette of a bottle. Doesn’t matter then even if it is small, as the company buying the advertisement placement provides the user with a free product. The social impact that the idea has is also a good selling point. As drives to equalization between genders. But because it is a new way of doing something it is important it stands out in all the right ways like using biodegradable period pads.  

The way the product and Ads on Pads has become from the pitching competition where it is now is by lot of thinking and drive of making the world bit better place. 

Menstrual protection products for students in a precarious financial situation – European Commission (europa.eu)

FreeWater is paid for by ads!

Colleges are being pushed to offer free menstrual products to students : NPR