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TENA Men Keep Control Campaign United Kingdom 2015
TENA's 'Control, Tips' campaign is a two-film United Kingdom healthcare advertising initiative created by AMV BBDO and launched in March 2015, using a fictional character named Stirling Gravitas to address male urinary incontinence through humour rather than clinical messaging.
The campaign arrived at a moment when male bladder health remained one of advertising's most avoided subjects. TENA, manufactured by parent company Essity and identified as a global market leader in the adult incontinence category according to nonwovens-industry.com, chose to confront that silence directly. Rather than defaulting to the medicalised, cautious tone common across healthcare advertising in the United Kingdom, the brand and AMV BBDO constructed an entirely fictional world around Stirling Gravitas — described by the production as an "ultimate silver fox" and self-styled "master of control," per shots.net. The two films, titled simply "Control" and "Tips," deploy this character across a series of increasingly absurd demonstrations of mastery: Thai massage, recreational knife-throwing, and lion taming, as documented by clapboard.com. Each scenario is designed to establish Gravitas as a man who commands every variable in his environment — before revealing the one thing that defeats him. The strategic contrast is built entirely from that irony. The campaign's tagline, "Keep Control," functions simultaneously as a product promise and an emotional acknowledgement, addressing the anxiety that urinary leakage creates in men's daily lives. Meta Redstedt, Global Brand Director at TENA, stated that urinary issues among men are much more common than most people know and can have a negative impact on life, adding that the campaign aimed to make men aware of how common the condition is and that products exist to address it, so men can keep control and their quality of life can return to normal. The campaign carries a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100, reflecting its creative ambition within a category that rarely invites entertainment as a strategic tool.
Male urinary incontinence carries significant social stigma in the United Kingdom. That stigma has historically suppressed both consumer willingness to seek products and brand willingness to communicate openly. AMV BBDO's strategic foundation for the TENA Men campaign rested on dismantling that suppression not through earnest education but through confident, self-aware comedy.
The adult incontinence market was substantial and growing at the time of the campaign's launch. According to nonwovens-industry.com, global unit sales in the adult incontinence category reached approximately 18.5 billion units in 2015, with annual market growth running at between seven and nine per cent. TENA's parent company SCA, now operating as Essity, was identified by nonwovens-industry.com as a global market leader within that competitive field, which included rivals such as Kimberly-Clark and Hartmann. In the United Kingdom specifically, the intersection of an ageing population and persistent category stigma created both a commercial opportunity and a communications challenge that straightforward product advertising had consistently failed to resolve. Competitors in the space had largely defaulted to reassuring, clinical framing — a tone that, while safe, did little to normalise the conversation or attract men who had not yet identified themselves as having a treatable condition. AMV BBDO, led by creative directors Toby Allen and Jim Hilson, identified humour as the mechanism most likely to lower defences and create genuine cultural visibility for TENA Men. By building a character whose entire identity is defined by control, the strategy invited men to see themselves in Stirling Gravitas without the discomfort of direct identification with incontinence. The brief, as reflected across coverage by shots.net and Little Black Book, was not simply to sell a product but to shift the frame through which men in the United Kingdom understood and discussed bladder health entirely.
Director Jeff Low brought the character of Stirling Gravitas to life through Biscuit Filmworks UK. Low's approach to the two films — "Control" and "Tips" — depended on absolute commitment to the fiction: Gravitas had to read as genuinely authoritative before the reveal of his one vulnerability could land with comedic force, as documented across coverage by shots.net and lbbonline.com.
The production assembled a substantial creative team to execute that vision. Creative directors Toby Allen and Jim Hilson at AMV BBDO shaped the campaign's overall tone and character logic. Additional creative contributors named in production records cited by clapboard.com include Prabs Wignarajah, Jeremy Tribe, Tom White, Pippa Morris, Sarah Douglas, and Alex Bird, whose collective work across the two films gave the campaign its layered comedic texture. Producer Toby Courlander and executive producer Orlando Wood oversaw production alongside heads of production Kate Taylor and Shawn Lacy, as documented by shots.net. Post-production was handled by The Mill London, whose visual work supported the heightened, slightly surreal environments — Thai massage rooms, knife-throwing ranges, and spaces occupied by a live lion — that the scripts demanded. The scenarios are constructed to escalate in absurdity while remaining internally consistent with Gravitas as a character. Each scene within "Control" and "Tips" functions as a self-contained proof point for his mastery, making the implicit admission of urinary leakage not a moment of shame but a wry acknowledgement that even the most composed man has limits. Per channel4.com, the campaign aired in the United Kingdom in March 2015, bringing this creative approach to a broad broadcast audience and placing TENA Men in a media context that reinforced the campaign's confident, non-clinical register.
No verified performance data for the 'Control, Tips' campaign is publicly available in terms of sales uplift, media reach figures, or brand-tracking outcomes. What the publicly documented record does confirm, across sources including shots.net, lbbonline.com, and campaignlive.co.uk, is the campaign's reception within the advertising industry as a meaningful creative intervention in a historically under-served category.
Structurally, the campaign demonstrates several properties that advertising effectiveness research consistently associates with strong results in stigmatised health categories. The use of a consistent, named character — Stirling Gravitas — across two films creates narrative continuity that reinforces brand recall. The contrast mechanism at the heart of each film, extreme competence undermined by one specific vulnerability, generates the kind of emotional resolution that makes advertising memorable. By choosing humour over anxiety, TENA Men and AMV BBDO avoided the category default of problem-amplification advertising, which tends to deepen avoidance behaviour rather than prompt purchase consideration. In the United Kingdom market, where male health communication has long faced cultural resistance, that tonal choice represents a structurally differentiated position. The campaign's deployment across film as a primary medium, reaching broadcast audiences in March 2015 as documented by clapboard.com and channel4.com, ensured the character achieved genuine cultural exposure rather than remaining a niche digital exercise. Meta Redstedt's public statement, cited by shots.net, underscores that the brand viewed awareness-shifting as the primary objective — a goal for which humour-driven film with a strong central character is well-suited, even where direct sales attribution is difficult to isolate.
The 'Control, Tips' campaign is a two-film United Kingdom healthcare advertising initiative by AMV BBDO for TENA Men, launched in March 2015. It features the fictional character Stirling Gravitas demonstrating extreme mastery in absurd scenarios to address male urinary incontinence through humour rather than clinical messaging, as documented by clapboard.com and shots.net.
Jeff Low directed both films through Biscuit Filmworks UK. Low's approach centred on making the character of Stirling Gravitas credibly authoritative before revealing his single vulnerability. Executive producer Orlando Wood and producer Toby Courlander supported the production, as documented by shots.net and clapboard.com.
Toby Allen and Jim Hilson served as creative directors at AMV BBDO on the TENA Men campaign. Additional creative contributors included Prabs Wignarajah, Jeremy Tribe, Tom White, Pippa Morris, Sarah Douglas, and Alex Bird, as recorded by clapboard.com across the two films titled 'Control' and 'Tips.'
TENA and AMV BBDO used humour to lower the social stigma attached to male urinary incontinence in the United Kingdom. Meta Redstedt, TENA's Global Brand Director, stated publicly via shots.net that the condition is far more common than men realise and that the campaign aimed to normalise awareness and prompt product consideration without clinical discomfort.
The TENA Men 'Control, Tips' campaign holds a Clapboard Score of 63 out of 100. This score reflects the campaign's creative ambition and its structurally differentiated approach within a healthcare category where most advertising defaults to medicalised, anxiety-driven framing rather than character-led comedic storytelling.
Stirling Gravitas is a fictional character created by AMV BBDO for the TENA Men 'Control, Tips' campaign. Described by production sources including shots.net as an "ultimate silver fox" and "master of control," he demonstrates dominance over extreme scenarios including lion taming and knife-throwing while being unable to control urinary leakage.
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