Campaign of the week: Bodyform’s #PainStories

The Innovation team at Instinctif harness the best of the future to deliver market-leading ideas in the present. The team’s specialism spans digital strategy and marketing, data & analytics, and strategic brand. With the world and news agenda fast-changing around us, now’s the time to get agile in how we think and work.

This newsletter brings you the best of the week in the ‘new normal’, straight from the desk of the Innovation team.

Historically, women’s pain has been systematically overlooked, misdiagnosed, and kept quiet.

But Bodyform’s latest campaign is looking to bring women’s stories of period pain to the fore.

Last year, Bodyform (known as Libresse outside the UK) launched a campaign entitled #WombStories to break down the unspoken truths about periods, wombs and vulvas. The campaign ad spotlights some of the real-life experiences women face, such as period pain, the menopause, and miscarriage (warning: video contains a portrayal of baby loss).

March marks Endometriosis Awareness Month, with the aim of ensuring the voices of those affected by endometriosis are heard (NB: endometriosis is a long-term condition where tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows in other places, such as the ovaries and fallopian tubes. Symptoms include pelvic pain, often chronic, and even fertility issues). It takes an average of over seven years to diagnose it, with diagnosis often delayed because the perception is that severe period pain is “normal”.

To coincide with Endometriosis Awareness Month, Bodyform has launched its latest campaign entitled #PainStories. The aim of #PainStories is to break the silence around endometriosis and women’s pain by closing the “gender pain gap,” one story at a time.

The Pain Gap

The “gender pain gap” for this campaign will help to articulate the experiences of pain suffered by women with a focus on endometriosis – it is estimated that one in 10 women of reproductive age suffers from endometriosis globally.

Bodyform has established a number of activities to help push the movement forward:

The world’s first Pain Museum: Through artwork, this virtual experience explores the taboos around pain, and sets out how we can create a language to confront pain going forward.

The Pain Dictionary: People with endometriosis were asked to articulate how the pain really feels – this description gave rise to a striking new visual and verbal language.

As Bodyform states, “Our Pain Dictionary is a new language for pain, based off real endometriosis sufferers’ descriptions of how pain feels to them – from stomping goats, to tightening barbed wire.” The hope is that the book might empower people to seek help if they are suffering in silence.

The Pain Report. The report aims to “identify cultural codes and behaviours across markets on the, subject of pain,”  identify the current medical systems used to measure pain, and show how doctors and patients could benefit more from having more honest conversations around pain.

The report includes interviews with 30 female experts across several disciplines as well as 20 advocates who suffer from painful conditions.

You can request a copy to download here.

Instagram is also a particular channel of note for the campaign, as mentioned by art director Lauren Peters, “Instagram feels like a place where there is a blossoming community around women’s health. There’s an environment of sharing and empathising around endometriosis. It feels like the right place to put it out there for people to engage with the work. If it resonates, hopefully people will feel more understood and use it as a practical device to get support for pain if they’re experiencing it.”

Much of the campaign content is being shared across this platform through Instagram Stories, posts and highlights.
You can contribute your own story here (it can be shared anonymously) and keep up to date with the campaign here.

Welcome to “slow Instagram”: Dispo 

What is it?

A startup photo-sharing app that seeks to combat the immediacy of Instagram.

The app mimics the experience of using a disposable camera (hence the name), with an interface limited to a viewfinder, zoom and flash, creating ‘natural’ unadorned photos. That means no stickers, no special effects – and no filters.

The photos appear with no caption, published either separately or in ‘rolls’ (essentially albums).

And for those missing the heady wait for photos to be developed from days of yore, Dispo mimics that, too; only revealing the photos taken at 9am the following day.

Who’s behind it?

YouTuber David Dobrik. In his words, he’s looking to counter the ‘over-filtered, over-curated age of Instagram.’

How’s it working out?

As of last week it was the fourth most-downloaded app on the App Store

It’s still in beta-testing and, like Clubhouse, is invite-only and available on iOS alone.

This week’s tip comes from Junior Account Manager, Katie Gabriel:

With the return to the office on the horizon, we’ve been collaborating with retail clients to make sense of our future attire after WFH for a year.

I personally cannot wait to put on a smart dress but I’ll probably wear trainers where possible. A hybrid approach, if you will.

Many firms are predicting a similar approach to how we work, with some days spent in the office and others spent WFH.

In fact, our client Cushman & Wakefield suggests the hybrid model will rocket post-pandemic, with 81% of businesses opting for it versus the mere 29% pre-Covid.

Will our fashion follow suit and become “hybrid”?

Two Japanese designers have perhaps taken this idea to the extreme, recently launching a ‘pyjama suit’. The upper section poses as a crisp white shirt, but from the chest downwards it morphs into a tracksuit, strategically out of sight from your webcam.

I certainly won’t be adding one of those to my virtual shopping basket, but if you’re tempted, you can check it out here (no judgement).