Essity is a leading global health and hygiene company, which develops and sells products and solutions in personal care, consumer tissue and professional hygiene. The company is focused on making a difference and caring for people every day.
Essity carried out a pilot study in two NHS care homes to trial their incontinence products, against the existing procured NHS products. The results of the pilot highlighted how the NHS is wasting both money and time by procuring sub-standard products for incontinence patients.
Essity wanted 72Point to highlight the problem, and call on the government to conduct an urgent review of continence care procurement practices.
72Point brainstormed with several Essity representatives, including medical professionals. An initial internal brainstorm determined the direction we should take – namely putting a big figure on the amount of money the NHS is wasting in total every year by procuring substandard incontinence products.
We recommended working with the data gleaned from the pilot study, and combining that with research into 500 medical professionals to reveal what continence care really looks like. As well as another study of 1,000 people with family members in care, to highlight the emotional side of living with incontinence and delve deeper into how tough life with the condition can be.
Capturing Emotion
We also sourced three case studies, via Essity, to bring the campaign to life visually and address the emotive side of the story. Video footage captured their stories and was issued to a wide variety of media.
104 pieces of coverage ✳︎
Media Coverage That Opened Conversations
The campaign secured 104 pieces of coverage. This coverage helped Essity to also highlight the problem internally, and they are now working with other NHS Trusts to replicate the pilot originally run in Lincolnshire.
Alongside significant coverage, following the campaign, Essity has been talking to NHS partners internally and have been using this campaign to open those conversations. The company has already been contacted by several NHS Trusts wanting to repeat their pilot scheme, with a view to changing how things are procured in their districts.
72Point has since been briefed on another campaign for Incontinence, to continue raising awareness of the ongoing problem within the NHS.
“Internally, the feedback from our Health and Medical business unit has been extremely positive with the President of the business unit stating that they had not seen anything like this before. Several members of the senior management team passed on their congratulations to the team that worked on the project.”
Gareth Lucy, Communications Director, Essity.