Healthcare has a deeply rooted gender problem. Women over-index in ALL types of pain, yet they’re more likely to have their pain ignored or dismissed by healthcare practitioners. Add to this the fact that almost all pain research is still only done on men, making society’s knowledge of pain in women woefully incomplete, and what you’re left with is a genuine health crisis for women. One that is leaving thousands in on-going, undiagnosed pain. It’s a phenomenon known as The Gender Pain Gap.

For Nurofen, a painkiller brand dedicated to putting people, not pain, in charge of life, this was painful to hear. So, we set out to tackle the issue. Not just through communications, but through deep organisational and societal change.

Our goal was to raise public awareness of The Gender Pain Gap, and through joining forces with relevant partners and organisations, put interventions in place for tackling it.

The core of the issue was that women’s pain was invisible, with See My Pain we aimed to make it visible.

But a problem this big needs a proper solution. Not just a TV-ad; but a nuanced, multi-year brand and business response. So that’s what we did.

Through an integrated PR, TV, print, B2B and digital campaign we shone a light on the scale of the problem and made it our mission to solve it: through corporate actions, empowering women and educating healthcare professionals. We launched the world’s first Gender Pain Gap Index Report, created a fake product range highlighting real dismissals women have received instead of treatment. And used this material to inform and educate both women and healthcare professionals via retail partnerships with 2x leading UK pharmacy chains.

By taking this committed approach we clearly communicated to women: ‘We hear you. We support you. We see your pain’.

The Gender Pain Gap issue had been widely studied in academic research, but always via small, disparate studies. There was a lack of robust data on the topic.

Our ambition was to plug that gap, with conclusive, empirical data, that would not only fuel our campaign, but also crucially allow the issue to be tracked year on year. Working with OnePoll, we comprised a comprehensive survey of 5000 men and 5000 women that looked at everything from incidents of pain, to how seriously pain had been taken and the resulting emotional impact.

In addition to quant data, we conducted face-to-face interviews with over 100 female pain sufferers. They shared accounts of going back and forth to doctor appointments with unexplained pain and being met with the same dismissals again and again. “But your tests look normal,” “are you sure you’re in pain?” “Could it be stress, have you tried yoga?”

See My Pain employed a considered and co-ordinated response with our partners:

1. We started by launching the world’s first Gender Pain Gap Report to validate the issue in society, and to our prospective partners. It featured the experiences of 10,000 men and women and revealed eye-opening stats such as 1-in-6 women experience severe pain every day, but 1-in-2 have been dismissed by healthcare practitioners.

2. We also used this moment to announce our system-changing commitments via consumer and industry PR.

3. We followed this up with a hard-hitting consumer campaign (TV, Digital, in-pharmacy shopper) honing-in on the dismissals and misdiagnoses women have received. We turned the real quotes we heard in research into fake medicine products, validating the pains that have for so long gone ignored.

4. Finally, this was all used to create bespoke unconscious-bias training material to be rolled out in 2x leading UK pharmacy chains.

We positively implanted the issue into the public conscience.

• Generated 300+ pieces of earned media coverage globally across including Sky News, Daily Mail, Stylist, WSJ, Forbes and globally in Australia, US, Germany, delivering 582m reach.

• Drove a huge spike in google searches for ‘Gender Pain Gap,’ overtaking both the Bodyform campaign and the UK Government’s Women’s Health Strategy announcement.

• 650% increase in positive brand sentiment

We un-did our own ingrained biases and set an example for the industry to follow suit.

• Became the first OTC medicine brand to announce gender balanced clinical trials across entire product range.

• Millions invested in new research in better understanding pain in women.