Hollister Incorporated makes life more rewarding and dignified for ostomates — people who live with a surgically created opening in their abdomen. For Ostomy Day 2021, Hollister asked StudioNorth to create a video that would leverage social influencers to broaden its reach and impact.

StudioNorth helped Hollister create this unforgettable video in which ostomates answer questions from curious kids.

The Challenge

Hollister is a market leader in ostomy products in the US. They wanted to expand their reach by targeting a younger audience within the ostomy community. The company made strong inroads with this audience with its 2020 Ostomy Awareness Day campaign featuring social influencers.

For Ostomy Awareness Day 2021, Hollister asked StudioNorth to help it build on its momentum from the previous year by leveraging its relationship with social influencers. The goal: help a younger demographic associate the Hollister brand with greater confidence while living with an ostomy.

The Solve

Hollister had strong relationships with several popular influencers — ostomates who had engaged large audiences in the ostomy community by sharing stories from their active lifestyles. (One of them, for instance, was a sub-2:30 marathoner.) StudioNorth and Hollister decided to create a long-form video featuring three of these influencers facing their toughest challenge yet: questions from curious kids.

We were confident this video would resonate with ostomates, because they field questions about their ostomies all the time. They also harbor doubts and uncertainties about topics many adults take for granted, such as swimming, playing sports and dating.

Seeing the influencers answer kids’ candid questions about these topics — with confidence, candor and plenty of laughs—would help ostomates gain some of that confidence for themselves. We believed they’d readily share the video with friends, family and their wider communities. Because: cute kids.

In addition to the full nine-minute video, we also produced several social ads featuring 30-second snippets.

The Result

The video was a hit with the ostomate community, generating massive viewing and engagement numbers by the end of 2021:

• 19,311 total video views (5,434 of the main video; 13,968 of the snippets)
• 402 hours of total watch time
• 69 likes, 85 shares and 14 new subscribers

Combined with the previous year’s award-winning campaign, this video and ad campaign contributed to a 608% increase in total ad impressions from 2019.