Medela Achieves Massive Reach with Swerve’s Integrated Marketing Approach

Swerve Strategic Marketing served as the Canadian Agency of Record (AOR) for Medela from 2019 to 2024. Over this six-year partnership, Swerve led the brand’s integrated communications strategy across PR, influencer marketing, media relations, and campaign execution.

As a trusted partner, Swerve helped Medela navigate a rapidly evolving consumer landscape, shift perception from purely clinical to lifestyle-relevant, and connect more meaningfully with Canadian parents.

During our tenure, we supported major product launches, ongoing category leadership, and year-round campaigns that contributed to increased brand visibility, consumer trust, and retail sales across the country.

Client: Medela

Industry: Infant Care, Parenting, Tech

Agency Role: Digital Marketing, Earned PR, Influencer, Events

Location: USA and Canada

Strategic Execution Across Brands and Audiences

The Challenge

Throughout the 2022/2023 fiscal year, Medela was launching six new products — Solo, Medela Baby, Intimate Apparel, Silicone Breast Milk Collector, Freestyle Flex, Freestyle Hands-free — into a highly competitive parenting and baby care market, where brand trust, expert validation, and peer recommendations are critical to purchase decisions.

The challenge was to cut through the noise with limited budgets, generate awareness with new parents across Canada, and drive meaningful engagement and ROI in a category saturated with similar claims and offerings.

Additionally, the brand needed to:

Secure high-credibility placements beyond traditional product roundups
Deliver measurable impact across both earned and paid efforts
And do so while maintaining an extremely efficient cost-per-contact

Our Goals

Goal 1. Launch and generate awareness for two key products, Solo and Freestyle Flex, among Canadian parents and caregivers.

Goal 2. Secure credible media coverage and high-visibility placements in both parenting and mainstream outlets to drive trust and purchase consideration.

Goal 3. Deliver strong influencer engagement and ROI through meaningful, high-performing content across social platforms.

Goal 4. Exceed annual PR KPI benchmarks for earned media stories and impressions.

Goal 5. Achieve best-in-class cost-per-contact (CPC), demonstrating high campaign efficiency.

Program Highlights

The Strategy

To achieve these goals, Swerve developed and executed a multi-faceted PR and influencer strategy that focused on trusted voices, targeted media and efficient reach:

High-Impact Media Partnerships: We secured a paid editorial integration with ParentsCanada, one of Canada’s leading parenting outlets, allowing for both controlled messaging and broad reach within the target demo. This resulted in 29 earned and paid pieces of coverage and nearly 2.5M impressions.
Earned Broadcast Feature: We landed a feature segment on Breakfast Television, strategically positioning Freestyle Flex as a must-have parenting tool. The national airing across 9 markets drove nearly 3M in cumulative reach, significantly amplifying exposure without additional media spend.
Influencer Engagement: We activated credible parent influencers to create authentic, high-performing content with an average 5.34% engagement rate — more than double industry standards — by encouraging product demonstrations, testimonials, and real-life use cases.
Efficient, ROI-Driven Execution: By focusing on quality over quantity, building strong media relationships, and ensuring influencer alignment, we kept the overall cost-per-contact at an outstanding $0.0047 — well below the $0.03 gold standard.

Program Highlights

Secured a paid media tour and editorial partnership with ParentsCanada to promote the launch of the Medela Solo breast pump, resulting in 29 pieces of coverage and 2.49M+ impressions.
Landed an earned national broadcast placement on Breakfast Television promoting Freestyle Flex in a “must-have gadgets for new parents” segment. The coverage aired across 9 markets and reached 2.9M+ viewers.
Collaborated with 56 influencer partners (paid and earned), generating 164 pieces of content.
Partnered with 9 paid influencers to promote Solo, Freestyle Flex, Medela Baby, and Intimate Apparel, resulting in 40 pieces of content and 5.4M+ impressions.
Total influencer reach (paid and earned): 10.97M+.

The Results

Over 12 months, the campaign led by Swerve Strategic Marketing for Medela exceeded key performance indicators across PR and influencer marketing, delivering measurable impact and surpassing annual benchmarks:

Target Stories: 200
Achieved Stories: 217
% to Goal: 109%
Total Impressions: 25,637,835+
Average Engagement Rate: 5.34% (more than double the industry benchmark of 2%)
Cost Per Contact (CPC): $0.0047 (exceeding the gold standard of $0.03)