Changing the nation’s view of incontinence is a daunting task, but driving sales as a result, by supporting category building and destigmatizing category communications, is even more challenging. ‘Drop Your Pants’, our galvanizing rally cry, permeated everything we did from our proactive street teams to mass media to our very own concert at Pier 97 in New York City.

Media needed to help reframe the brand by leveraging unexpected, more youthful environments. Not only reaching the incontinent, but society as a whole. So, rather than leveraging with the expected partners, like WebMD, we utilized Facebook (a first for Depend), Women’s Health, People Magazine, and an integration on The Talk (where host Sheryl Underwood talked about having the condition and models dropped their pants). We made people take notice with billboards in NYC and by creating the ‘Drop Your Pants and Dance’ launch event. The activation didn't stop there, we captured content (a lot of content) and distributed it across digital media – social, influencers and online video.

Our success delivered across three core areas:

1) Cultural acceptance and mainstream engagement with the issue -

o 82% of incontinent individuals stated the ads let them know they weren’t alone and 77% agreed Depend was helping to reduce the stigma

o Perceptions of shame and embarrassment fell by one third, to 18%, amongst people without incontinence

o Youtube views increased 973%

2) Category growth, driven by breaking down the stigma -

o Category growth was nearly 2 percentage points higher than similar programs

o Penetration growth during launch exceeded expected growth by 7%

3) Depend Sales, driven by the promo/activation -

o Average monthly Depend sales, during program, exceeded forecasts by 3% , and online purchases increased 17% year-over-year

o 19K samples requested in month 1 (288% higher than YAG) - conversation rate 11% higher than other KC sampling efforts