Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa: Emotional Support Bits

New Zealand faced an uncomfortable truth: research showed that 62% of New Zealanders typically keep sexual health concerns to themselves. And some – 16% – admit they’ve never spoken about sexual health to anyone at all. With Sexually Transmitted Infections rapidly on the rise in New Zealand (such as reported syphilis cases jumping year-on-year by 45%), sexual health needed to be brought into the open more than ever.

Shame, stigma and discomfort were often getting in the way of open discussions about sexual health. Compounded by New Zealand’s ingrained culture as a shy, stoic nation, mental and physical health issues were typically kept bottled inside, rather than aired out in the open. Sexual health even moreso; nothing seemed to make New Zealanders more uncomfortable.

So, Sexual Wellbeing Aotearoa (New Zealand’s leading sexual health provider & educator) was on a mission to get New Zealanders comfier chatting all things sexual health – particularly for its key demographic of 16–24 year olds. By enlisting an unexpected tool to tackle the taboo: humour.

We got people talking, laughing and breaking through the taboo with the ultimate comfort tool: Emotional Support Bits.

Riffing off the Emotional Support Items raging over TikTok (like Emotional Support Water Bottles, Teddy Bears, or Pickles), these huggable, squeezable plushies were designed to diffuse tension, ignite the chat, and bring on the laughs. Breaking down barriers with an unexpectedly humorous way to talk about sexual wellbeing.

Each Emotional Support Bit was a bespoke one-off, based on real peoples' sketches of the bits they felt most comfy with. Kicked off by influencers then opened to the public to win their own, hundreds of bits of every kind were sketched and submitted through our campaign landing page. Then dozens more were sewn, stitched, stuffed (by one perfectionist seamstress, Denise) and sent all over New Zealand. The Bits travelled far and wide to the furthest reaches of New Zealand – and to some of our hardest-to-reach audience members.

As a socially-led campaign, the Bits brought the sexual wellbeing discussion organically into the feeds of our audience. And being colourful plushies, they even sneakily avoided social media sensitivity rules, meaning our twisted take on sex education could reach our audience where it usually wouldn’t. Helping to turn our audience from squirmy, to comfy. And from bottling-it-in to laughing-out-loud.