ERIC eNews
Help and Information about bedwetting, daytime wetting, constipation & soiling for parents, young people, children and health care workers
Wee Horror
posted on 22 Sep 2009 and tagged bedwetting, eric, helpline, posters and leaflets, wee horror
ERIC’s first awareness month called ‘Banish the Wee Horror’ took place in June 2009. Predominantly a media campaign, the aim was to increase awareness of ERIC with particular focus on bedwetting. Thanks to Lorna Montgomery who is a long term supporter and now Trustee of ERIC, we received pro bono help from Tangible Response – an agency based in Cheltenham that helped us come up with the concept and then developed the design of the Wee Horror and created the email viral campaign.
We picked June, as the majority of children and young people we are in contact with tell us how much they dread sleepovers and school camps. Also June is when families are preparing for school holidays. We wanted to ensure that as many families as possible would know that ERIC was here to help be it via our Helpline, message boards or online shop.
We worked hard and secured the support of Julie Walters, a childhood bedwetter herself and also from high profile celebrity doctors and agony aunts, such as Dr Chris Steele, Denise Robertson and Dear Deidre from The Sun.
We had over 47 articles published, this included newspapers, magazines and online articles. We also did 3 radio interviews.
We also ran a viral email campaign featuring the Wee Horror; feedback from the email and the character the Wee Horror were all very positive. Ferring Pharmaceuticals generously printed 5,000 Wee Horror leaflets, all of which were distributed within 2 months. The Wee Horror Posters were available on request, and the ERIC team personally distributed posters and leaflets within the Bristol area.
The results of the awareness campaign were very encouraging, calls increased by nearly 30% to the Helpline. The number of people contacting ERIC about bedwetting increased by over 60% on the previous month.
We are already planning our awareness month for June 2010 and believe with a longer lead in time, next year will be even more successful.
Thank you to everyone who supported the campaign, it was very much appreciated and it really paid off!
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Directors Message
Another summer is upon us an exciting time as children, young people and families everywhere look forward to summer camps and holidays. As we know all too well at ERIC for some children this is not an exciting time and they worry about sleepovers and how they will manage and if their friends will find out that they wet the bed. This is a busy time of year for ERIC as we look to support families and health professionals with ways of how to manage bedwetting. This is also why we run ‘Banish the Wee Horror’ in June – it’s very timely and a chance for ERIC to get into the media and encourage people to talk openly about their continence problems.
ERIC had a fantastic opportunity to talk publicly about constipation when we featured on Woman’s Hour, to coincide with the NICE Guidelines on Soiling and Constipation – we received a record number of hits to our website on the day of the interview. This once again shows how important it is ensure information and support is at hand and how keen parents are to talk about the issues and seek help.
We hope by talking about the problems that we encourage even more people this year to step forward for help.
Kind regards
Jenny Perez
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Sponsored by
Ferring Pharmaceuticals Ltd
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