E45 and T&Pm: authentic, human storytelling

When T&Pm won Channel 4’s annual Diversity in Advertising Awards for Karo Healthcare’s E45 skincare brand, the agency and the brand were already on a mission to connect with the trans community – a group that has been underrepresented in advertising or, worse, overlooked completely. Winning the award, which included £1million of airtime across the Channel 4 network, gave E45 an extra boost to further this drive.

Coincidentally, Karo Healthcare had realised that it needed to revitalize and refresh perceptions about its E45 brand by connecting authentically with younger, more modern audiences. David Adamson, head of creative strategy at T&Pm and founder of WPP Unite, says that part of this strategy was looking for stories of communities and individuals who are uncomfortable with their skin.

“Our research into [this] led to the trans-plus community, and we saw that powerful connection between E45’s focus on skin comfort and the unique skincare needs of trans people, especially those who are going through gender affirmation treatment,” he explains. “So there was a natural overlap there that we were starting to explore. And the Channel 4 award gave us an extra push. But the focus on the trans-plus community actually really came from a genuine place of interrogating, where do we go next in our comms with our new brand platform, because we wanted to reach those underserved markets and highlight often overlooked dermatological challenges that people face,” he says.

With a strategy identified, the client on-board and the Channel 4 award on the agency’s shelf (along with the free airtime banked), all that was left was a creative route – something that needed to be handled sensitively, and with the involvement of the trans community and others.

Mika Alcock, associate creative director at T&PM, led this process and was keen that the resulting ad offered a counterview to the negativity and hostility that the trans community was facing. Fortunately, the client was fully behind the creative route – even if time wasn’t necessarily on their side (the spot was turned around in weeks).

“We had very little time to execute it,” they say. “Dan [Dehlavi], my creative partner, and I went in with just one idea, which is rare. We were very clear from the beginning about what we wanted to do. Once we got into production, it was incredibly intensive. At Academy Films [the production house], we were going through every board in detail, piecing it all together in a way I hadn’t done before.”

If the creation of the ad was done at speed, the preparation for any potential backlash (including from the trans community) was something that the team took time over and prepared for. Rachel Bowen, division director at Halpern, a PR division within T&Pm, was responsible for this. “The client took it very seriously, understanding the impact of creating an ad like this, she says.” Key to pre-empting and reacting to the response was a series of workshops to prepare everyone involved and map out responses, given that some brands have abandoned the trans community after facing a backlash. “The E45 team wanted to avoid that and approached it with commitment, learning everything they needed to handle it responsibly,” she says.

The T&PM team developed a detailed communication framework for responding to feedback across platforms, which helped them stay prepared and steady amid mixed reactions as well as a playbook that the client could use to reassure senior stakeholders at Karo Healthcare. “We anticipated all of this and stood firm, thanks to our planning. On social media, many people corrected negative comments and supported the ad, so we often didn’t need to respond directly. Every backlash scenario we anticipated came true, and our preparation made all the difference,” Bowen says.

This duty of care extended to the talent in the ad too. T&Pm provided guidance on managing social media and offered therapy options. “The brand was fully dedicated to doing this right and supporting everyone involved, which made all the difference in how the campaign was received,” she adds.

Assembling the talent was also a rigorous process. “We engaged deeply with our own team, including members of our LGBTQIA+ internal community, like Mika and others, who contributed insights based on lived experiences,” says Adamson. “This internal feedback helped shape the project from the initial brief, through research, and finally in the brainstorming and client-sharing stages. Beyond our agency, we also connected with WPP Unite, our wider LGBTQIA+ employee resource network, to gather trusted perspectives from across the industry.”

The agency also collaborated with the Diversity Standards Collective to bring in an objective external lens, and which connected the T&Pm team with industry experts and advocates on trans matters. “They arranged more intimate research groups with trans and non-binary individuals to discuss their experiences. This multi-layered approach allowed us to incorporate various viewpoints—from our team, the wider network, and external experts, which was invaluable,” says Adamson.

It was essential to include diverse voices in the process - and incidentally this feedback resulted in some internal soul-searching that made T&Pm reflect on its own policies and practices as an agency, which reaffirmed their decision. “It was a reminder of why it’s so important to listen to different voices—there are aspects you might be blind to if you’re not experiencing them yourself,” says Adamson.

Equally, they helped inform the creative choices. Alcock says: “For example, we initially planned to use a corset in one scene, but focus groups indicated it could be seen as a drag reference, which wasn’t accurate for this context. We ultimately switched to a bra instead. This type of real-time feedback kept refining the work, ensuring authenticity.

They add that the casting process was also handled with great sensitivity. “We had representation and intimacy consultants to ensure everyone felt comfortable, both during casting and on set. In terms of talent, we were fortunate to find incredible actors. The challenge was more about creating a supportive and respectful environment for them.”

The resulting ad was an ad that celebrates “trans joy”, with little symbols and ‘Easter eggs’ that carry special meaning to the trans community, and that refuses to allow negativity to define them. Alcock says that the spot uses a combination of lightness and darkness. “The aim was to present these women as real people, showing the complexity of their experiences,” they say. “Our director put it perfectly in her treatment: emotions can be multi-layered. Something painful can also be funny, and our goal was to capture that full human experience.”

And on a wider level, the ad has enabled E45 to make a broader, sustained commitment to the trans community, leading the brand to commission groundbreaking research with trans healthcare professionals to understand the impact of transitioning on skin. A further outcome has been two informative leaflets: one for healthcare providers and another for trans patients, both crafted with feedback from the Diversity Standards Collective. These resources use accessible, community-authored language and have been distributed to GPs across the UK, expanding knowledge on how to support trans patients in healthcare.

Find out more about the Diversity in Advertising Award https://www.diversityinadvertising.co.uk/