Supporting partners on the pregnancy journey

Understanding the opportunity

Tommy’s research showed that 7 out of 10 partners feel that support during and after pregnancy was not good or non-existent, 38% of new dads worry about their mental health, and almost two thirds say that partners who experience baby loss need help to open up. We needed to help Tommy’s raise awareness of their new hub that offered this well-needed support among dads and partners on the pregnancy journey, an audience that was entirely new to the charity. 

Bridging the gap

Tommy’s had recently run extensive qualitative and quantitative audience insight. From this, we surfaced five core pillars to lean into – support, strength (not needing to be the strong one), visibility, preparedness and togetherness.  

Following on from focus groups, 1-2-1s with partners and conversations with the midwives team, we created a campaign platform called #InThisWithYou, crafting its own look and feel, which felt rooted in the Tommy’s brand, but specifically for the partner audience, and a set of core messages developed based on the five pillars.  

Engaging audiences

Our campaign needed to reach any partner on the pregnancy journey, being inclusive of different relationships, e.g. same sex partners or adoptive parents or dads. We also needed to resonate both with people who were on a positive pregnancy journey but feeling anxious and those experiencing miscarriage or baby loss, which is tonally challenging.  

From the insight, we knew that to meet partners where they were, we needed a full channel mix. And given that the audience was entirely new to Tommy’s, we needed to create space to test and see what worked best.  

Media was not cited as a key channel to reach our audiences, so it wasn’t the primary focus for delivery. We pulled away from traditional media, swapping The Guardian for beer mats, BBC Breakfast for Reddit, and a radio day for Spotify.  

Our multi-faceted approach to content saw us reaching partners through the workplace with a one-pager for HR leads, organic and paid-for social media spanning Instagram, Reddit and Spotify, a poster for health care settings, a pilot in pubs during the World Cup, and through influencer support.  

In addition to social cards with stats and key messages, we had a couple of powerful case studies, filmed talking about their experience, which were shared across social channels. 

As we were taking a test-and-learn approach, we focused on generating quality learnings to maximise opportunities to nurture and engage the audience long-term, dialling up what worked best.  

Building value

As well as raising awareness around Tommy’s and the new support hub, our work provided the charity with strong foundations and learnings on which to continue reaching partners on the pregnancy journey, including a new creative that was distinct, but recognisably Tommy’s.  

Over the one-month campaign

There were over 3k visits to the hub, 500K+ views of campaign video, and a 2.7% increase in male visitors.