Alcea Surrogacy

The Brand:

The Role:

The Timeframe:

The Ask:

Alcea Surrogacy is a female-owned and operated agency that helps build families through third-party reproduction or surrogacy.

Strategist

9 Days

Develop a campaign that inspires highly-qualified people with uteruses to apply to become a surrogate through Alcea Surrogacy in a historical decline of surrogates.

The Context

Project Background

Alcea Surrogacy is a female-owned and operated agency that helps build families through third-party reproduction or surrogacy. Not only does the Alcea team live and work in this space every day, but many of them have also experienced their own journey in the surrogacy world. Guided by the company pillars of empathy, inclusivity, trust, and transparency, Alcea embodies the characteristics needed to support your journey. Nothing is impersonal or rushed, they treat people like people.

Last year Alcea grew significantly in the number of intended parents using their services. But they have experienced a historical decline in surrogates. High Demand, Low Supply. They need a minimum of 20 surrogates a month to meet the demand of intended parents. As less than 3% of applicants will qualify as a surrogacy candidate, this is a tough challenge to meet

The Challenge:

There is a historical decline in the number of surrogates across the nation. With the influx of intended parents that Alcea has seen and the decline of surrogates, providing their clients with a match is proving to be increasingly difficult.

There are a variety of challenges and deterrents in the decision to become a surrogate with factors ranging from concerns about health, safety, bodily autonomy and financial stability both internally in the surrogacy family unit to external factors like healthcare in the U.S.

One striking example is that the United States has the worst maternal mortality rate in the developed world. According to the CDC, about 700 women die every year in the U.S. as a result of pregnancy or delivery complications.

The Opportunity:

We had an opportunity to educate potential surrogates on the process through Alcea. We aimed to showcase how different Alcea is as an agency and promote a transparent, comforting, supportive environment to any person who is willing to serve as a surrogate for intended parents.

The Audience:

Healthy people with uteruses, who are open to becoming a surrogate in the NYC / Tri-State area, but need more transparency around the journey as a whole. They have a strong support system in their family who would be experiencing the pregnancy as well.

Severely empathetic, they may have experienced a life-changing moment that has guided their want to help others however they can.

Unfortunately, they're still unsure of the surrogacy journey due to their fear of the pressures that will undoubtedly come with it.

They're uninformed on how the surrogacy process might affect their mind, body, and life moving forward.

Ideal Segmentation:
Ages 21 - 42
Has had at least one child previously

The Insight

There is a lack of education within the surrogacy space & a stigma to be broken.

The Strategy

Make us feel the journey of surrogacy through every person’s lens involved throughout the experience.

How it happened

This project wasn't easy. There were several pitfalls littered on the path to a successful campaign. First and foremost, this is a difficult topic, riddled with biases and assumptions. Not only did we identify a lack of education around surrogacy, but our group lacked factual knowledge as well. We implemented a series of "creative mini storms," where the creative and strategy teams met to brainstorm while still developing our strategy which was highly effective for our team's work.

Key Learnings:

Biases are complicated but can be set aside with intentional effort.
Personal stories and experiences are excellent ways to inspire a team and a strategy.
Gather as much factual knowledge about a tough topic as you can.
Bringing in the creative team early helps make the strategy and story cohesive from the start.