Mamamia Team Thursday 18 October 2012 10:38am

• (1537)
• (200)
• (27)

We are loving this HARD.

In 2012, brands can thrive or fail by the way they respond to public challenges or criticism. Alan Jones? Doing a little bit shit on that front.

Which makes British sanitary pad company Bodyform’s recent response to a customer complaint approximately  10,000 shades of brilliant.

It started when a guy called Richard left a funny/sarcastic comment on  Bodyform’s Facebook page accusing them in a tongue-in-cheek way of misleading advertising.

This is the comment he left:

Richard’s original post

Hi , as a man I must ask why you have lied to us for all these years . As a child I watched your advertisements with interest as to how at this wonderful time of the month that the female gets to enjoy so many things, I felt a little jealous. I mean bike riding, rollercoasters, dancing, parachuting, why couldn’t I get to enjoy this time of joy and ‘blue water’ and wings !! Dam my penis!! Then I got a girlfriend, was so happy and couldn’t wait for this joyous adventurous time of the month to happen …..you lied!! There was no joy, no extreme sports, no blue water spilling over wings and no rocking soundtrack oh no no no. Instead I had to fight against every male urge I had to resist screaming wooaaahhhhh bodddyyyyyyfooorrrmmm bodyformed for youuuuuuu as my lady changed from the loving, gentle, normal skin coloured lady to the little girl from the exorcist with added venom and extra 360 degree head spin. Thanks for setting me up for a fall Bodyform, you crafty bugger

The post received more than 86,000 likes and over 3000 comments.

So how did Bodyform respond?

The made the following video which they posted on their Facebook wall as a direct response to Richard. With it, they wrote:

“We loved Richard’s wicked sense of humour. We are always grateful for input from our users, but his comment was particularly poignant. If Facebook had a “love” button, we’d have clicked it. But it doesn’t. So we’ve made Richard a video instead. Unfortunately Bodyform doesn’t have a CEO. But if it did she’d be called Caroline Williams. And she’d say this:

If there was an emoticon for standing up and applauding (as opposed to sitting down and farting) we would be using it right now.

Even if Richard’s original post was a plant (cynical? us?) it’s still clever and funny and original.

Bravo, Bodyform, bravo.

Not since this piece of witty heaven have we loved an ad for a sanitary products quite so much.