It’s a Pee-SA.
UK femtech brand Elvie has devised a unique way to wash away the stigma surrounding female urinary incontinence — by erecting a billboard in London that “pees” on passersby.
“Elvie’s giant ‘peeing’ billboard is bringing the issue out of the shadows and into the spotlight,” Aoife Nally, the company’s chief marketing officer Aoife Nally, told Adweek. Elvie launched the campaign in response to TikTok removing a video of a popular fit-fluencer leaking while lifting due to urinary incontinence — the unintentional passing of urine.
Their rationale? It was too graphic.
“How can we educate about pelvic floor health, if we’re too frightened to talk about leaks and too frightened to share our experiences?” Elvie wrote in an Instagram post showcasing the ad. “Or if social media censors us, labeling us too taboo?”
In homage to the banned TikTok clip, the pee-SA features a giant cutout of a woman inadvertently springing a leak while squatting. The 20-foot billboard is rigged such that water dribbles from her netherregions onto pedestrians below like a water park fountain.
“Leaks happen … but they don’t have to,” reads the accompanying tagline.
In an added splash of authenticity, the model depicted is real-life UI sufferer Megan Burns, a 28-year-old mother of two from Cornwall whose doctor reportedly prescribed her tampons to mitigate postpartum UI while working out, The Cut reported. Currently, while the UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) doesn’t recommend using menstrual accessories for routine UI management, they say they are effective at preventing inadvertent micturition “during exercise.”
Sprinkling pedestrians might seem offputting, however, Elvie finds it important to raise awareness of UI, which reportedly affects “84% of women in the U.K.” and more than 60% of women in the US. Experts speculate that the condition — of which there are four different types — disproportionately affects women because pregnancy, childbirth, and menopause make loss of bladder control more likely.
Elvie’s splashy advert is just one part of their campaign to shatter taboos surrounding involuntary water-making, AdWeek reported. In the future, they plan to run a series of adverts featuring female UI sufferers, including fit-fluencer Nesrine Dally, the first hijab-wearing athlete to compete in Muay Thai.
Raising awareness is especially vital given the recent medical fiasco in which several women were left in agony after getting outfitted with transvaginal meshes — the purported “gold standard” of UI treatments.