Olly is a brand of probiotics for your vagina, and a campaign led by &Walsh is celebrating it, loud and proud.
Say what you like about &Walsh, the New York creative agency led by Jessica Walsh: they never fail to grab our attention.
From using DALLE to rebrand nuclear power to launching “queer playground” app Lex, their work is invariably full of fun, bursting with fresh visual ideas and eyebrow-raising in all the right ways. And here’s another example of why &Walsh is an oasis of originality in a sea of samey branding.
Brand and product
Olly is an American company and brand of vitamin supplements and other wellness products. Founded in 2013 by Eric Ryan and Brad Harrington, it’s headquartered in San Francisco. Its mission is to simplify these products and put the focus on end benefits versus the individual ingredients.
&Walsh worked on the 2023 Big Vagina Energy campaign featuring OLLY’s premium line of women’s wellness products. These include Happy Hoo-Ha, a probiotic blend that helps ensure a healthy balance of good bacteria and vaginal pH levels, and Lovin’ Libido, a blend of traditional botanicals (Ashwagandha, Damiana and Maca) to boost desire, enhance arousal and support sexual satisfaction in women.
Campaign
&Walsh’s campaign tells the story of how vagina owners can be powerful, confident, and take up space. The aim is to evolve OLLY’s message to change the way society views and talks about vaginas and health.
&Walsh concepted, scripted, and created a 30-second TVC, an OOH campaign extension, and built out a suite of campaign guidelines for OLLY to continue executing their message. Their goal was to dive into the meaning behind the Big Vagina Energy message and to craft a campaign that had purpose beyond the headline.
To bring the spot to life in an ownable way, &Walsh crafted the “OLLYverse”, which included set development, a custom colour palette and typographic elements built into each set and space. The latter included custom typography that could be embedded directly into the sets to help drive messaging home. Custom music also helped bring the world to life, as did characters and bold messaging statements that remind women that their body is never an apology.
“Big Vagina Energy is about power, confidence, and the taking up space every vagina-owner can have access to when they feel good in their body,” says &Walsh. “We wanted to take the message beyond a singular body part and expand it in relation to the whole self – all with a dash of humour and wordplay. The main character here isn’t the vagina or the human, but rather the relationship between them and what happens when that relationship is cared for and nurtured.”
It all adds up to a lot of fun, and it’s good, clean fun at that. The videos we’ve shared on this page aren’t just bursting with colour, energy and positivity; they’re definitely safe for work, too… unless your colleagues are shocked or offended by the mere word ‘vagina’. Admittedly, some older people still decry the day that tampon advertising was allowed on television. But as long as you’re on board with that, this easily fits into the same space, with a sense of plain talking and street smarts that make it all feel natural and authentic.