Read (And Share) Dr.PAWPAW’s Open Letter To Instagram.

Dr.PAWPAW’s open letter to Instagram: “Dear Instagram. Please reactivate @dr.pawpaw and help us continue to raise money and awareness for Teenage Cancer Trust.”

Today, Dr.PAWPAW’s Founders, Johnny and Pauline Paterson released an open letter to Instagram. Read it below.

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Dear Instagram, we are Dr.PAWPAW.

We founded this now global brand in 2013 and since 2014 have been harnessing the power of social media marketing relying heavily on our instagram community to drive awareness, sales and grow the business. We are a small, family-run business that has grown in the digital age and have built a core customer database through Instagram. We give back, we drive sustainable ethics throughout the whole business and we want to continue doing more good.

Early in 2022 – our account got hacked. We were devastated to say the least and immediately felt the absence of the 130K strong community we had been building up over nearly a decade.

After weeks and weeks with no response from Meta – one kind person we had reached out to on Linkedin saw a message from our PR Manager and helped us. The help was appreciated but the results were short lived. Just a week after we were back on track – but still suffering the loss of thousands of posts that had been deleted by hackers, our Instagram account was disabled.

Why? This time we really do not know. Have the hackers returned? We have received no ransom requests and our security is tight, but with no word from Meta over four weeks in, we are lost.

In January 2022 we donated £56,000 to our charity partner Teenage Cancer Trust.

This included a % of sales from 2021 and also the sponsor money from our co-founders London Marathon run. Our community didn’t get to see this exchange in the way we wanted them too. They didn’t get to feel the pride and the excitement with us as their contribution was handed back to this charity who will do so much good with the money.

In April 2022 we re-launch our Dr.PAWPAW X Teenage Cancer Trust Shimmer Balm packaging.

This product has been created in collaboration with Teenage Cancer Trust and we are launching four new packaging variations each of which features an incredible story from a young person who has struggled or is still struggling with a cancer diagnosis. Our Instagram community won’t see this campaign launch, won’t benefit from reading the remarkable stories and won’t be able to help themselves by purchasing or donating.

Throughout 2022 we continue to donate 15p from each sale of Dr.PAWPAW X Teenage Cancer Trust Shimmer Balm to Teenage Cancer Trust.

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In May 2022 we will be donating a % of sales from Dr.PAWPAW Ultimate Red 25ml to Get Lippy – a taboo busting campaign which targets the awareness of gyno health. We cannot reach our strong community with no access to our Instagram page.

In 2019/2020 we donated over 50,000 products to our frontline workers in the UK, US, Belarus and Greece.

Without our Instagram page we would not have been able to reach this many people and also share the stories of so many on our profile by dedicating the @dr.pawpaw account to sharing inspiring thanks to frontline workers during this time.

Our Instagram community, the strong collection of followers help us with the above, help us greatly in fact and without them the amount of money we are able to raise and the awareness we are able to spread is significantly reduced.

We now find ourselves over a month into the lockdown of our account with again no word from Meta despite many, many attempts to contact them. This is our last hope, we saw it worked for the CEO of @saaltco, maybe it will work for us. Should we start again? in a time where Instagram is saturated more than ever and the algorithm is making it increasingly difficult to be seen or do we abandon Instagram altogether.

We feel hurt, we feel a little taken aback with the lack of support and communication from Meta after spending tens of thousands of pounds in advertising with both Instagram and Facebook but most of all we feel disconnected from our Community.

Please help us, we have tried every known route to us so far.

Our very best wishes,

Johnny & Pauline Paterson

Dr.PAWPAW‘s Founders

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