Reflection – Storytelling

Challenge & Selection

I am pursuing my Master of Business Administration from College of Natural Resources. Being an MBA student , we have the privilege to take part in  numerous corporate competitions which addresses the current problems faced  by their clients. I came across one of such competition recently. The name of  the competition was Scale It Up and the company involved was a women  hygiene company called Silvia Fado (https://www.campbell-silva.org/app/tagsauthor.html).

The challenge faced by the company was to develop a Go-To-Market strategy  for one of their products which had a lot of social stigma associated with it – A  Menstrual Cup.

Application

To address the above stated problem, me and my team member conducted both  primary and secondary research to understand why there is still so much stigma  and taboo associated with Menstruation in our country. We asked open ended  questions to both males and females and we tried to find out some valuable  insights with the secondary data that was already researched upon.

Insight & Approach

The results of the survey was quite fascinating! We came to know that a large  part of the society including well educated people still believed in some blind  beliefs such as menstrual blood is dirt and bad. In village in Assam, India , girls  were not allowed to go to school after they hit their first period because their  fathers believed that women in their land are cursed by GOD!

We understood that the only way to deal with this issue is by educating both  men and women of all age groups about Menstrual Health Management and  then make them aware about menstrual cups offered by Silvia Fado.

Our proposal was to educated school going children at an early age through  comic book stories about menstruation. For grownups , we proposed to conduct  workshops and educate them in form of storytelling which they can relate to.

For slums, we proposed to spread an awareness about the cost cutting measure  if they switched to a menstrual cup which lasted for 5 years and how it can be a  one time investment .

As a result of understanding the “WHAT IS” through both primary and  secondary research and , “ WHAT IF” by brain storming about the ideas with  my team mate once we got insights from the research and “WHAT WOWS”  through executing the whole plan with story telling , we could convince the co –  founders of our IDEA. We even won the 1st National Runners Up position  (https://www.linkedin.com/feevanessacook ) in the  competition and I am happy to state that the company is working on executing  our idea.

