October is Menopause Awareness Month, and the room is absolutely full. Brands, campaigns, product launches, awareness posts. All menopause, all the time.
This is progress. Menopause is no longer whispered about, ignored, treated as something women should endure quietly. That shift matters enormously.
But here’s the thing: the elephant isn’t being ignored anymore – it’s taken over the room.
In breaking the silence, we’ve created saturation. The elephant has taken up so much space, there’s barely room left for nuanced conversation. And for the women we’re trying to reach, it’s starting to feel less like support and more like noise.
Understanding the landscape
The menopause market is valued at £16 billion globally and forecast to reach £600 billion by 2030 [1]. That’s an enormous opportunity, and brands have noticed. But so have women.
In a 2024 poll, 41% of women said they don’t trust the claims of menopause product brands, and 22% of women over 55 feel media attention to menopause is commercially motivated [1].
This disconnect has a name: menowashing. It’s what happens when brands leverage menopause awareness without scientific substance or genuine empathy. Several UK brands have already been censured by the Advertising Standards Authority for misleading symptom relief claims, further eroding trust.
When the noise crowds out connection
Here’s the paradox: the more brands talk about menopause, the harder it becomes for any single brand to be heard.
Women report feeling bombarded by self-care ads and contradictory health advice, struggling to distinguish credible guidance from noise. Over 40% of midlife women feel their lifestyle isn’t authentically represented in advertising, and that campaigns often appear patronising [2].
The elephant isn’t just menopause itself. It’s market saturation masquerading as awareness. It’s the commercial rush to capture a lucrative demographic while sidelining clinical evidence and personal authenticity. It’s everyone shouting “menopause!” so loudly that genuine conversation becomes impossible.
3 takeaways for standing out
1. Lead with lived experience, not marketing speak
Women want authenticity and lived-experience storytelling rather than idealised or medicalised portrayals. This means featuring real voices, acknowledging the messy complexity of symptoms, and resisting the urge to package menopause into neat, marketable categories. Before you launch that campaign, ask: would a menopausal woman recognise herself in this, or just your brand’s version of her?
2. Choose specificity over breadth
When the market is saturated with general menopause messaging, specificity becomes your differentiator. Rather than trying to serve all menopausal women, focus on a particular experience, symptom, or life context. Perimenopause looks different from post-menopause. Menopause at 45 isn’t the same as menopause at 52. The more specific your focus, the more genuine your connection – and the clearer your positioning.
3. Ground claims in evidence, not aspiration
With trust at 41% and regulatory bodies watching, evidence-based communication isn’t optional – it’s essential [1]. This doesn’t mean dry clinical language. It means being honest about what your product can and cannot do. It means citing research. It means acknowledging when something works for some women but not others. Transparency builds trust faster than any empowerment slogan.
Quick win
Review your menopause content through a sceptical lens. If a woman who’s been burned by menowashing read it, would she trust you? Remove any claims you can’t back up with evidence. Replace generic empowerment language with specific, practical information. Sometimes the most powerful marketing is simply being credible.
References
[1] The Grocer. Inside the £16bn menopause market. https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/analysis-and-features/inside-the-16bn-menopause-market-money-spinner-or-scam/695454.article
[2] Creativebrief. Standing out in the media fog: perimenopause and advertising. https://www.creativebrief.com/bite/voices/standing-out-in-the-media-fog-perimenopause-and-advertising
