Procter & Gamble Brings Always Discreet Incontinence Pads to NFL Audiences in Largest Campaign Yet
Procter & Gamble is placing its biggest bet yet on American football to sell a product few advertisers talk about loudly: incontinence pads for women.
The consumer goods giant plans a substantial advertising campaign for Always Discreet, its bladder-leak pad line, that will air largely during NFL games in the 2026 season, according to Variety. Melissa Suk, vice president of adult incontinence for North America at P&G, told the trade publication that professional football is the number one most-watched sport among the brand's target consumers.
Suk said the campaign is the largest P&G has mounted since the Always Discreet business launched. The brand is one of the younger names in P&G's portfolio and shares its Always branding with the company's long-established menstruation products.
The campaign features three women billed as "NFL moms": Elisha Jarrett, mother of Chicago Bears defensive tackle Brady Jarrett; Angela Burns, mother of New York Giants linebacker Brian Burns; and Katie DeJean, mother of Philadelphia Eagles defensive back Cooper DeJean. In the commercial, Elisha Jarrett tells viewers: "I never miss a moment of any of my son's games."
The choice of football Sundays is deliberate. A year earlier, P&G used NFL games to reach parents with advertising for its Pampers diaper brand — a pattern of treating the league's massive weekly audience as a direct line to the people who buy household products.
What makes this campaign stand out is the product itself. Incontinence is a category advertisers have historically kept quiet, even though surveys commissioned by Always Discreet paint a picture of widespread, under-discussed need. A survey tied to a 2024 partnership with actress Taraji P. Henson found that 54% of women who experience bladder leaks did not know what was happening to their body, PR Newswire reported. A separate survey from an October 2024 partnership with television personality Shirley Ballas found that 94% of women admit they do not do pelvic floor exercises as regularly as they should, Business Wire reported.
P&G has been building toward this kind of visibility for years. In May 2017, the company launched an Always campaign with a one-minute commercial featuring women who acknowledged they do not like to talk about bladder leaks, the Cincinnati Business Courier reported. An earlier campaign called "Question Your Protection" featured a 30-second spot, MediaPost reported in 2022.
The NFL connection has not always been smooth for P&G. In September 2014, the company cancelled an on-field breast cancer awareness promotion it had been planning with the league, the Associated Press reported. The withdrawal came after a string of off-field incidents involving players and domestic violence. P&G spokesman Paul Fox said at the time that domestic violence is "completely unacceptable," the Washington Examiner reported.
Twelve years on, P&G is back on the NFL schedule — this time with a product that asks viewers to rethink a conversation most people would rather not have, placed in one of the few ad slots guaranteed to reach tens of millions of households in a single afternoon.
