When The Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, it was a horrible day for people who can have children. There was an unsettling realization amongst our employees that, for the first time in our nation’s history, rights had been actively taken away from a group of people. We knew we had to do something. And we wanted “that something” to be more lasting than a flash-in-the-pan PR stunt; we knew we had to find real solutions for a very real problem.
Our solution turned out to be a plush, pink 6-inch stuffed womb we designed and manufactured, named Woombies. Woombies are protest plushies, created to be a symbol of protest for years to come, with 100% of proceeds going to Planned Parenthood. And for every Woombie purchased, our team individually packed and mailed one to anti-choice politicians, too.
Our team created dystopianshoppingnetwork.com to further awareness and got a boatload of national press coverage, including in Creativity. Shorter videos with satirical Woombie jingles (“Hands off our bodies! Get back to your oil lobby!”) were seeded across social channels, and TikTok videos featured Woombies targeting specific anti-choice politicians. We also identified influencers and online advocates to send Woombies, helping to spread word of the movement organically throughout social. All content was created to educate people about the massive implications of overturning Roe.
Our team members also hit the streets and the halls of congress. Woombies were taken to marches as a symbol of protest and hand-delivered to politicians’ offices in Washington. We even took a 15-foot tall inflatable Woombie to the Women’s March in D.C. to help launch the effort. The in-person appearances also drove user-generated social content as people shared their own photos with Woombies.
We sold out of our first shipping container of Woombies within 5 weeks, are working to meet the demand for the orders that continue to pour in, and last week wrote a check for $7,000 to Planned Parenthood. As Fast Company pointed out in their article on the effort, “if launching a product seems like an elaborate way to make an argument, that’s sort of the point.” We wanted to create a lasting symbol of unrest. And we struck a chord with the creation of Woombies.
