Using Empathy and Education to Help Change the Face and Narrative of Healthcare
Amanda E/J Morrison is the Co-Founder & President of Julie, a modern women's pharmaceutical company focused on using empathy and education to help change the face and narrative of healthcare. Amanda is excited to be an entrepreneur focused on digital strategy and brand building. She previously served as Chief Marketing Officer at Underlining, a premium brand studio launching innovative brands across multiple beauty and wellness verticals. Amanda also Co-Founded Mented Cosmetics, a pigment-first beauty brand celebrating women of all hues, and still sits on their board.
Julie’s first product, emergency contraceptive pills, hit the market in October and is now available at Walgreens, CVS, and other major retailers. The company also has a robust donation program.
Amanda spoke to The Continuum about shaking up a category that didn’t have much brand loyalty and taking on the responsibility of educating consumers about issues that are rife with misinformation.
Can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you became an entrepreneur?
I grew up in North Carolina; my dad was in the Navy, so we were a military family. I’m the youngest of four girls, and felt like I was always figuring something out. All my sisters went to college in North Carolina. I went to Howard in DC. They all lived in North Carolina and started families early, and I was like, “No, I'm moving to New York.” I think I've always been trying to find my path.
Initially, that path took me to investment banking; I was at Goldman Sachs for a number of years. I never thought of myself as an entrepreneur. I thought I was going to follow this very corporate route that felt comfortable to me. Then I went to Harvard Business School and met all of these people like me who had startup companies and felt very comfortable in that kind of chaos and ambiguity. Honestly, I’d thought that was for rich people, but business school was the first time where I thought, “Oh, you win some, you lose some, and all of them seem to still be okay. Maybe I could try this thing too.” It normalized the idea of taking a chance for me.
The first company you founded was a makeup company. Did you have a background in cosmetics?
Not officially, but there’s an expectation in business, especially in New York, of what a professional looks like. When I was on Wall Street, I had to figure out how I was going to fit into it, and makeup was always an important part.
I would find myself playing chemist, buying what was available but then making it work for me by mixing shades together. I realized that this was a common theme among women of color who couldn't find their shade and couldn't find products for them. We were all playing chemist in our kitchens.
My co-founder and I are two Black women, and we felt so othered in this world that's supposed to make you feel beautiful. So, we started Mented Cosmetics, which we called a pigment-first cosmetics company. It was all about placing women of color at the forefront of beauty. For five years as Co-Founder and CEO, I got to talk to consumers about inclusive beauty, why it mattered, and build out products that were specifically made for women of color. I also got to talk to retailers and really help push that agenda in the world of beauty. It was very personal to me because I embody what it means to be the other in the room.
How did your new company, Julie Products, Inc., come to be?
While I was building that company, my Co-Founders were building a company called Starface, which was all about changing the narrative of acne for Gen Z. Instead of patches made to blend into the skin so no one would notice, their product was a patch in the shape of a star. Their goal was to make it a thing people felt proud to walk out of their house with rather than something that was filled with shame. We were doing the work separately, but, in both cases, it was about changing the narrative so people didn’t feel othered.
They actually approached me because they were interested in starting a women’s health company with a similar stigma-free message and were trying to determine if there was room for that in the market. I gave them my take on what I would do with the brand. I told them I would make this your cool big sister who is your friend and your voice in the fight.
We set out to build a content-first pharmaceutical company that would change the narrative. This isn’t the way anyone traditionally thinks of pharmaceuticals or healthcare, but we knew there had to be a different way to address Gen Z, especially women that age, because they don’t want to have things dictated to them; they want to be part of the conversation.
“We built this because there’s a need and because we believe that if you make truly personal, positive connections between women and healthcare, everybody is better off.”
Your first product, also called Julie, is emergency contraceptive pills (ECPs) which can be taken after sex to prevent pregnancy. Why did you start with ECPs?
The interesting thing about this category is that you really had a monopoly for the last ten years. Ever since it was allowed to be sold over the counter, there’s been one leading brand and some generics, but the leading brand also makes the generic, so you've literally not had another voice or face in the category.
There was so little communication about it. It was all being done in silence. I started to think of it as the loudest secret that everyone knows, but no one's talking about publicly, as though it is impolite or not appropriate to discuss. We saw this opportunity to truly change the narrative.
And, frankly, there was only one major brand on the market and no real brand affinity or loyalty for it. Everyone used the name. You know, like Kleenex. You would say that brand name, but you might have purchased the generic or were given the generic, and you didn’t even know that. That was our aha moment; we realized there was a way to break through and talk about this thing differently and have people feel about it differently.
How are you approaching marketing that’s different from how it’s been done in the past?
We did a lot of testing and focus groups, and we found that Gen-Z doesn’t want doctors showing up in lab coats, that doctor’s offices feel intimidating, and they don’t like it when authority is telling them what to do. We have medical advisors, but we shine on social because we have our doctors sitting in their houses in regular clothes, saying, “Hey, I’m a doctor. Let me give this to you straight about medically what is happening to you.” That content plays really well, and we also have content that’s super funny. We have comedy writers telling jokes to each other about all the misconceptions about ECPs that are out there. It’s like a spoonful of sugar with medicine; this is heavy, so we provide a little humor.
We’re also doing a lot of educating. There’s a startling stat that only 17 states require sex education to be medically accurate. That’s part of our guiding light of how we think about the content we're creating. We're filling in a real sex education gap for people. We even see it in focus groups where we have to stop and literally explain to people how their body works.
With ECPs in particular, there is a lot of confusion. We’ve gotten questions from the beginning about the difference between birth control, ECPs, and the abortion pill. We are always having to clarify that these are three distinct things and explain how each of them works. But there’s also confusion about access, so we have to tell people that ECPs are legal, that they don’t have to show their ID or pay with cash, and that you can just go to CVS and buy them.
Our goal is to eradicate the shame around this product. We have the first two counts on the market, and the conversation around that is: one for now, one for later, you might as well be prepared. We want people to know there’s no shame in having this at your house. If you're going to have condoms and everything else in your sex toolkit at home, this should be there too.
“We did a lot of testing and focus groups, and we found that Gen-Z doesn’t want doctors showing up in lab coats, that doctor’s offices feel intimidating, and they don’t like it when authority tells them what to do.”
You said you were making up for a sex education gap, do you think it’s a problem that this falls to brands like yours as opposed to schools or government agencies or the healthcare community?
Yes and no. I’ve had this conversation with some doctors who were questioning whether we’re qualified to do this or if we’re the right ones. I think this is just America. If we’re going to build a culture and a country around capitalism, then we have to know that it's the mechanics of capitalism that are going to change most things. In this country, for better or worse, money talks, and we’ve decided that we’re going to use our money to talk about this. There are a lot of other contraception companies out there that you never hear from because providing education is not what they care about. I'm not here to judge, but it's what we care about, so if we can use our commercial side to further the greater causes that we care about, why not us?
Speaking of causes, you have a 1:1 donation program. Can you tell us about that?
The donation program has been part of Julie since we launched. For every unit that we sell, we donate one to someone in need. Our first batch of donations, which happened last quarter, included over 200,000 units, and we’re gearing up for more. We have over 70 donation partners in all 50 states. We have some national partners, and we have some really small partners that hand out Julie in nail salons and barber shops. We've diversified the program; our partners are federally qualified health centers, domestic violence shelters, sexual assault response, and prevention programs, and street outreach teams that do harm reduction.
We built this because there’s a need and because we believe that if you make truly personal, positive connections between women and healthcare, everybody is better off.
What’s next for Julie?
We want to expand access to ECPs. We’ll expand retail access, but we’re also looking at other non-traditional places we could be in, like vending machines, bars, or hotels. And we’re looking toward other products.
ECPs have been a great conduit to having a ton of different conversations that we're excited to have. Some of them are about science and medicine, but not all. Some are going to be about how you feel that next morning. Some about whether you’re part of the generation that's not taking birth control and not going to the doctor. We also want to talk about your dating and sex lives. It allows us to go in so many directions.
We're very interested in unprotected sex and that morning-after experience, so we’re thinking about all of the other things you need to be acutely aware of now, particularly STDs. There’s a rise in syphilis, chlamydia, and gonorrhea in this country, and a lot of people aren’t going to doctors regularly to be screened. There’s also a lot of education needed in this area, so I could see us tackling that next.
July 25, 2023
