Liz Ellis fronts Asthma Australia’s new campaign “She Needs to Breathe” via Paper + Spark

Sydney-based independent agency Paper + Spark has launched She Needs to Breathe, Australia’s first national campaign dedicated to the connection between women’s hormones, life stages and asthma, developed on behalf of Asthma Australia.

The campaign, which went live on this week, fills a critical gap in the women’s health conversation. Despite women accounting for 61% of all adults living with asthma in Australia and being twice as likely to die from the condition as men, the gendered nature of the disease has never been the subject of a dedicated national campaign. Until now.

Paper + Spark led end-to-end: from strategic positioning and creative development through to media relations, digital execution and media planning. The campaign taps into the momentum of Australia’s growing women’s health movement, positioning asthma and its little-understood relationship with hormonal change across puberty, pregnancy, perimenopause and menopause, as a missing piece of that conversation.

Former Australian Diamonds captain and broadcaster Liz Ellis fronts the campaign, lending personal credibility to the cause. Ellis, who has lived with asthma her entire life, revealed she had never been told about the hormonal connection to her symptoms until joining the campaign.

Says Kate Miranda, CEO, Asthma Australia: “We needed a partner who could translate complex health information into something that would genuinely reach women, not just inform them, but move them to act. Paper + Spark did exactly that. They brought strategic rigour and real creative instinct to a campaign that we believe will shift the dial on how asthma in women is understood and managed in this country.”

The campaign launch coincides with winter,  the highest-risk period for people living with asthma and builds on the Federal Government’s landmark Women’s Health Package, which has placed hormonal health firmly in the national spotlight. By positioning asthma within that broader conversation, Paper + Spark identified an opportunity to reach women who may not have previously engaged with asthma messaging.

Paper + Spark CEO, Zeina Khodr, said the brief demanded both precision and boldness, creative that could carry weight in a regulated health environment while breaking through to a general consumer audience: “Women have been managing asthma their entire lives without anyone telling them their hormones might be making it worse. That’s a massive gap and a massive opportunity to do work that actually matters. She Needs to Breathe is the kind of campaign that reminds you why integrated creative and communications done well can change the way people think about their own health. We’re proud to have built it for Asthma Australia, and proud that it’s the first of its kind in market.”

The She Needs to Breathe campaign hub is live at asthma.org.au/she-needs-to-breathe and provides women with information and resources spanning the key hormonal life stages at which asthma symptoms may shift.

Client: Asthma Australia
Agency: Paper + Spark
Creative Director: Margot Alais
Strategy: Zeina Khodr/Becky Amon/Tanya West

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