Urinary Incontinence Awareness Project (2018-2019-2020)

Hayatı Kaçırmayanlar Kulübü

Launching in 2018 under the leadership of the CANPED brand and Kontinans Derneği (Continence Association), our awareness project on Incontinence (Urinary incontinence problem) reached 17 million women through different media and channels in 2018-2019-2020.

Starting Point of the Project

There are 2.7 million women over the age of 40 who suffer from urinary incontinence in Türkiye. Since urinary incontinence was not regarded as a disease by women, the application rate to specialists for the treatment of the problem was quite low. One of the biggest problems was that people with urinary incontinence did not talk about it.

Another disadvantage was that the target group was unaware of the availability of incontinence pads and treatments, and the topic of urinary incontinence was underrepresented in the media and digital media. While the awareness project “Hayatı Kaçırma Sen, Bir Yolu Var İstersen” explained that urinary incontinence was a problem in 2018, it aimed to provide women with information to help them solve the problem in 2019. The project evolved into the Hayatı Kaçırmayanlar Kulübü in 2020, thanks to the community created, and awareness points were reached in provinces.

We published a book of missed opportunities all over Türkiye and with 27 celebrities

We published a book of missed opportunities all over Türkiye and with 27 celebrities One out of every 4 women aged 40 and over in Türkiye suffers from urinary incontinence. According to the findings of a nearly two-year CANPED survey, the most common problems for women with urinary incontinence in Türkiye are a lack of self-confidence and a fear of going out on the streets. One of the survey’s findings was that many women stated, “I can’t hold my life like I can’t hold my urine.” This sentence sparked an awareness campaign based on the common theme “missed moments in our lives” in order to raise awareness about the issue and make people feel less alone.

As a result, in order to ensure that the problem is discussed in the media, particularly in women’s media, we turned it into a book project with a famous name (the face of the project), in which people who have the problem and those who do not share the moments they missed in their lives within the scope of the campaign, involving people from all over Türkiye and 27 famous names. All revenues of the book were donated to KASDER (Turkish Association For Muscle Diseases). As the face of the project, a name that can communicate with the target audience aged 45 was chosen: Nergis Kumbasar.

During the process of collecting stories for the book, a pre-launch event was organized, and a shopping mall launch event was organized to promote the book once it was completed. A first-in-the-world incontinence dance choreography was prepared for the events, and our project face Nergis Kumbasar and six female dancers performed the awareness dance at both events.

The book includes 85 stories and the 1st edition of the book, which was printed in 7500 copies, sold out. Famous names such as Seyfi Dursunoğlu, Onur Büyüktopçu, Ayşegül Domaniç Yelçe, Ayşenur Arslan, Metin Uca, Enver Aysever, İsmail Hacıoğlu, Çiçek Dilligil, Doğukan Manço, Açelya Akkoyun, Yılmaz Vural, Orhan Ertanhan, Bekir Aksoy, Ceyhun Yılmaz, Haktan Akdoğan, Metin Zakoğlu, Tuğba Özerk, Ragga Oktay, Seda Demir, Can Gox, Nezihi Tosuncuk, Türkan Varol, Serap Özaksoy, Musa Çözen, Ali Gültiken, Ali Sami Alkış, Oğuz Tongsir ve Turgay Kıran told their stories in the book.

The campaign, which continued in 2018-2019, reached a total of 7 million women and 4 million men.

Hayatı Kaçırmayanlar Kulübü visited 6 provinces

While the association and the brand worked to introduce the disease and give women confidence in 2018 and 2019, they wanted to communicate one-on-one with the target audience in 2020. We started the informative seminars of the “Hayatı Kaçırmayanlar Kulübü” in this sense. We have implemented an information campaign that not only focuses on Istanbul but also on provinces where this issue is not discussed, and that can interact one-on-one with the target audience.

The provinces to be reached were determined according to the intensity of urinary pad use. The project also included the municipalities of Istanbul, Bursa, Izmir, Antalya, Gaziantep, and Ankara, aiming to organize information seminars. With this strategy, it was intended to raise regional awareness about urinary incontinence and the use of urinary pads.

We met with women in six provinces with Nergis Kumbasar, the face of the project, and Prof. Dr. Tufan Tarcan, President of the Kontinans Derneği.

Hayatı Kaçırmayanlar Kulübü tried to understand the street

We asked the public frequently asked questions about urinary incontinence while conducting street interviews with Nergis Kumbasar in six provinces. We also published it on our Youtube channel.

We reached 10 million women in 2020 thanks to Hayatı Kaçırmayanlar Kulübü Roadshow project.