NAFC Life Without Leaks Campaign

NAFC’s Life Without Leaks Campaign – 2017

The Need

More than 25 million Americans live with incontinence. In addition to the physical hardships this creates for those living with the condition, it also creates emotional barriers, preventing people from living the life they love. Fear of having embarrassing leaks in public can lead to shame and isolation, as sufferers begin to retreat from their normal activities, friends and family. The objective of Life Without Leaks was to raise awareness of bladder leakage and urinary incontinence, and to urge people to seek treatment. The campaign was intended to demonstrate in a personal, relevant way that bladder leaks don’t have to stop anyone from living their best life.

Strategy

Many incontinence campaigns simply highlight the problem. The Life Without Leaks Campaign was different in that it focused on the solution. Our aim was to show people what their lives could be like if only they actively sought to address their bladder leakage. We accomplished this by highlighting people enjoying a range of everyday activities in meaningful ways, rather than focusing on leaks and how limiting they can be.

Our hope was that by placing the emphasis on positive outcomes, people would get a sense of what they may be missing out on by avoiding treatment. By offering compelling, relatable examples, we sought to prompt incontinence sufferers to seek help and find treatments that were right for them as distinct individuals with distinct symptoms.

Program Development and Execution

The Life Without Leaks campaign highlighted 3 different people living with incontinence: a middle-aged woman who no longer felt comfortable doing all the things she once did, a new mom who was unable to fully enjoy motherhood because of childbirth-associated incontinence, and an older man who was missing opportunities to spend time with his family. These profiles were specifically selected because they represented a broad spectrum of ways that incontinence manifests itself, and our intention was for audience members to recognize themselves in one of the stories.

Despite the differences in each of the characters’ age, gender and symptoms, all of them had one thing in common: they were trying to live their lives to the fullest and were not willing to let incontinence get in the way.

The centerpiece of the program was a video for each character depicting his or her challenges and how they were able to successfully address them.  It was supported by written stories, a web page on nafc.org, blog posts, a press release and a social media campaign. Each of the videos can be viewed by clicking the following links:

Lauren’s Story

Kelsey’s Story

Alan’s Story

Results

NAFC reached more than 90,000 people on Facebook and our ads received 115,437 impressions, all with an ad budget of just $435 over the course of 6 months. Our videos were viewed 6,838 times on Facebook in addition to 700 views at NAFC.org.  In addition, there was an 80% increase in website visits to related web pages on NAFC.org compared to before the campaign.

Overall, the campaign received significant positive feedback from patients, industry professionals and healthcare providers for helping to raise awareness of just how treatable incontinence is and how the effort to seek help can produce a meaningful difference in people’s lives.