BACKGROUND

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.

When you notice The Gender Pain Gap, you can’t un-see it. And when we saw it, we realised Nurofen, as the world’s leading pain brand had a responsibility to fix it. Not just in communications, but through deep societal change. Our goal was to raise awareness of The Gender Pain Gap, both amongst consumers and healthcare practitioners, to help women becoming more empowered and Healthcare Providers (HCPs) more informed and willing to change.

But how do you start unpicking such a deeply ingrained systemic issue? By engaging the system.

This is the story of how Nurofen shone a spotlight on a pervasive but overlooked issue, and through a series of commitments and partnerships, challenged the wider healthcare industry to be an ally to the women who need the world to ‘See My Pain’.

STRATEGY

Speaking to female pain sufferers we learned just how common unconscious bias is amongst doctors and pharmacists – with stories of women going back and forth to appointments and being dismissed coming up again and again. We realised how well-suited Nurofen was to not just talk about The Gender Pain Gap issue, but genuinely tackle it.

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?”

CREATIVE IDEA/SOLUTION

The Gender Pain Gap had been widely studied in academic research, but always via small, disparate studies. There was a lack of robust data on the topic. Analgesics brands don’t publicly share data on the gender breakdown of their clinical trials, so it was impossible to tell how Nurofen’s current protocols stacked-up. But, despite the significant investment involved, we decided to send a message to the industry by gender-matching all future clinicals. And with laboratories across the country and long-standing partnerships with healthcare organisations & retailers, Nurofen could make changes that drive society forward.

The core of the issue was that women’s pain was invisible: invisible in research, and invisible in the eyes of healthcare professionals. With See My Pain, we aimed to change that by employing 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. [View & download the report at https://www.nurofen.co.uk/see-my-pain/]

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

3.     We followed this up with an integrated B2B and hard-hitting consumer campaign (TV, Digital, Print, OOH, in-pharmacy shopper) honing-in on the dismissals and misdiagnoses women have received, validating the pains that have for so long gone ignored.

4.     The data further inspired a provocative public awareness campaign as well as providing concrete evidence that could be used within healthcare professional training: To drive public awareness of the issue we turned the real quotes we heard in research into a new fake product range, including specially designed ‘patient information’ style leaflet inserts highlighting the Gender Pain Gap report findings. And we used this material to inform and educate both women & HCPs via bespoke unconscious-bias training and retail partnerships with 2x leading UK pharmacy chains.

RESULTS

*We positively implanted the issue in culture:

·       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.

*We engaged women:

·       Over 3,000 posts and comments from women on campaign material, connecting with one another and sharing their own experiences.

*We engaged HCPs – changing opinions and behaviours:

·       Influential HCPs posted in support of campaign, including Dr Nighat (BBC Breakfast) and Dr Philipa Kaye (ITV’s This Morning programme). This is hugely important as Influencers are heavily regulated in UK pharma – the fact they posted a branded report organically is almost unheard of. 

·       Training material has been rolled out to 10,000+ pharmacy staff.

·       87% of healthcare practitioners researched now acknowledge that there is a problem.

·       In-pharmacy shopper activation resulted in 5% sales uplift.