I am a millennial, a woman and a daily user of a birth control pill made by
The campaign, called #ActuallySheCan, is right on the basic elements of empowering millennial women. But in the details it begins to feel like something devised by a person who learned everything he knows about millennial women from Buzzfeed.
I sat down with Allergan executives Bill Meury and Herm Cukier last week to talk about the new campaign. Aside from the hashtag, the effort will entail live events, celebrity endorsements, a partnership with Cosmopolitan magazine and physician engagement, all in the hope that its target audience will take all that empowerment straight to the doctor's office.
"This is an unprecedented investment that Allergan is making in educating and informing millennial women, who are not really today engaged as much as other generations in their own healthcare and wellness about wellness options -- including contraceptive options," explained Cukier.
62% of people who use the manufacturer's products are women, and its vast women's health division encompasses three major areas: birth control, fertility aids, and menopause products. What Allergan seems to be hoping is that women in that first category use the company's other women's health products as they age and perhaps even learn about its other, non-gynecological products.
Millennial women are the age cohort most likely to use hormonal contraceptives, and Allergan makes more than a few, both generic and branded. But despite this, both Cukier and Meury were insistent that while birth control is indisputably important to millennial women, they hope the campaign reaches beyond that and into other categories of healthcare.
Like any good millennial, I'm skeptical of any empowerment campaign whose endgame is to grow a customer base. But there's something weirdly admirable about the women's health division of a pharmaceutical company insisting on not reducing its customers entirely to their uteruses.
The good news is that Meury claimed that the fact that Allergan is behind the empowerment push won't be hidden, because millennials want information "to be complete and accurate and balanced and authentic." (Really, isn't that what any consumer wants?)
But putting ideas into practice is where things get a little uncomfortable. #ActuallySheCan could be viewed as a reclamation of a word that has become online shorthand for "mansplaining." But according to Cukier, the hashtag (which the company suggests users append to posts like "Selfie like no one is watching" and "Getting back on the spin bike") was inspired by "the catchphrase that we know is really popular: 'I can't even.' But actually she can. And actually you can."
It's moments like this -- and a discussion of "shemojis" that users can make on the campaign's website ("which is going to be a lot of fun for them") -- that make the campaign feel disingenuous and distract from its own stated goals. That same website also has a section on birth control and is, in fact, intended to be an educational platform and promotion for Allergan's Lo Loestrin pills, not an emoji engine. Allergan is also reaching out to the 30,000 OB/GYN professionals in its sphere of influence to figure out how to improve conversations between young, female patients and their doctors. This is a real problem -- according to a study last year, doctors and their patients can't even agree on what aspects of contraception are most important to discuss during an appointment.
Unfortunately, the goals of the #ActuallySheCan campaign risk getting lost in the effort to appear cool and of-the-moment. No one wants to be a member of a group reduced to a few easily identifiable stereotypes by marketers. And Allergan can encourage female empowerment -- but it should do it through its efforts to get young women to take charge of their healthcare. Not with emojis.
