With the fate of women’s reproductive rights hanging in the balance after the Trump election win, panic-purchasing contraceptives is on the rise.
According to Google Trends data, immediately following election night, searches for abortion, IUDs, contraception and birth control were up over 100%. What’s more, in the three days following the election, Julie, a company offering emergency contraceptives, saw an average of 50% week-over-week sales growth per day at drugstores, with most growth seen in Idaho, Florida, Texas and South Dakota where abortion remains a point of contention. Julie also experienced 10x sales growth on its Amazon storefront post-election and saw double-digit sales growth week-over-week across the business, with some retailers showing a 20% week-over-week lift.
In response to the surge, Julie rolled out an advocacy campaign. Titled “Just because you had sex, doesn’t mean you’re f*cked,” the campaign aims to democratize critical information about the purpose of the brand’s contraception pill and important legal information. The digital-first campaign, first released in late November, lives across all of the brand’s social platforms.
“This campaign was inspired by the election,” Amanda Morrison, co-founder of Julie alongside Julie Schott and Brian Bordainick, told Glossy. “We were very encouraged that seven out of 10 reproductive rights amendments … were passed, but three states not having full reproductive rights or seeing their amendments pass is a shame for women everywhere. So between all those that were elected and the amendments that didn’t pass, we thought, ‘What can Julie do in the wake of this?’”
Julie’s response was to lean on its community to further drive home the brand’s goal of making women’s health care, information and products more accessible. As part of the campaign, Julie tapped over 15 paid and non-paid collaborators, with a combined following of over 2.5 million across TikTok and Instagram, to share their experiences using emergency contraception. The unique, self-created videos will be posted on both Julie’s and the creators’ channels. Participants include beauty creator and angel investor Hannah Bronfman (1.4 million Instagram followers), podcaster Lexie Lombard (125,000 Instagram followers), creator Yuna Lee (59,800 TikTok followers) and comedian Casey Rose Wilson (194,000 TikTok followers).
“We wanted to address the truth of what’s happening … in the Julie way: by cutting through the post-election noise and actually addressing people’s fears. We built this campaign really quickly, and once we saw and felt the tone post-election, that’s when we said, ‘This needs to be in your face and as provocative as we can make it, to get people to understand what’s happening because the fear is so high — hence the tagline,” Morrison said.
To Morrison’s point, Trump’s forthcoming presidential term brings about much uncertainty, between the looming tariffs and the future of the Department of Health & Human Services under Robert F Kennedy Jr.’s leadership. So much so, in fact, that many women have begun stockpiling various forms of over-the-counter contraception.
Morrison said the campaign has the potential to expand into a larger movement in 2025, including with campus pop-ups in the spring. Overall, the Julie team hopes the various homemade videos from the collaborators will help to answer some of consumers’ concerns about the next four years.
As of the week of Thanksgiving, the combined following and reach of Julie’s campaign was 11.3 million followers, the brand shared.
The campaign ends a busy year for Julie. On November 12, after years of clinical testing, Julie expanded into a new category with the launch of its Cold Sore Treatment. The over-the-counter product, which promises to prevent cold sores caused by the highly-common HSV-1 virus, is available for purchase in all CVS stores across the country and retails for $20.
Morrison told Glossy that the launch is part of Julie’s retail growth strategy. Two years after launch, Julie is in over 18,000 retail locations across the country with plans to expand to more locations in 2025, she said.
