Social Value
If you want change to happen, don’t ask the audience being mistreated to change. Go to the source of the problem.
GenM was formed by Sam Simister and Heather Jackson, two women unwilling to settle for the invisibility of the menopause in society. From patronising portrayals to a lack of products, services and support for this natural transition, GenM was established to drive change for the UK’s 15.5m menopausal women.
The original business concept was a one-stop-shop website. From symptom education to a directory for menopause-friendly products and services, GenM aimed to be ‘Google for the menopause’.
Propaganda were appointed in 2021 to help launch the brand online. However, Propaganda’s consultancy quickly identified challenges with this model. As a two-person organisation with limited funds, reaching a broad audience was a challenging proposition and unlikely to quickly drive the wider scale societal change they desired.
Propaganda recognised that engaging directly with established brands and businesses, encouraging them to change, would allow Gen M to achieve a much bigger, wider and more impactful influence on menopause-friendly products and support.
Propaganda set GenM on this new strategic direction, targeting the key audience of companies and brands. This approach, creating positive change for ‘the change’, has already generated more significant and enduring social impact than any direct-to-consumer efforts GenM could achieve.
Outcome:
● GenM became ‘The Menopause Partner for Brands’ – a professional body leading pioneering organisations to improve the menopause experience for all. Through GenM, brands are able to impact menopause in the workplace to support employees, in business to help raise the ethical commercial opportunity of serving a menopause audience, and externally to consumers, ensuring organisations commit to representing, educating, supporting and portraying this audience authentically.
● In the 6 months since launching, 55 brands have united and committed publicly to improving the menopause experience, becoming GenM Partners and taking action to create progress for a hugely underserved audience. Brands such as Boots, Marks and Spencer, Royal Mail, Co-Op and JP Morgan are among some of the household names who have become GenM Partners.
● Delivering a sustainable business model for GenM, Propaganda recommended a 3 year contract for Partners. Holding them accountable to upholding their menopause commitments, this approach has delivered £370k of income in the first year, projected to £850k revenue over the lifetime of the contracts.
● Propaganda has built GenM’s brand equity with consumer and business audiences, delivering messaging that menopause is a societal issue that affects everyone, whilst championing Partner organisations through national campaigns that have delivered a total reach of 142.5 million so far, including titles such as Forbes, The Times, Marie Claire, Daily Express, You (Mail on Sunday), Times Radio, and BBC News.
● Progress is individual to each organisation, but examples include offering menopause-specific products, creating menopause workplace policies, internal comms initiatives to educate all employees on this taboo topic, better signposting for menopause products online and instore, and campaigns to overcome censorship of women’s health on social media platforms.
View the Propaganda profile in the MCA Members Directory.