BAND-AID® Releases Collection of OURTONE™ Diverse Bandages

After making a promise to consumers in June 2020 that they would create a line of Black and Brown bandages to serve the diversity of our world, BAND-AID® has finally launched this line. In their announcement, BAND-AID explained,

“We are committed to launching a range of bandages in light, medium, and deep shades of Brown and Black skin tones that embrace the beauty of diverse skin. We are dedicated to inclusivity and providing the best healing solutions, better representing you.⁣”

The collection, OURTONE™, is a series of bandages, “which come in three distinct shades of brown to help ensure that Black people and other people of color have more options in the first-aid aisle,” Johnson & Johnson detailed in an official statement.

BAND-AID’s commitment to introducing a product meant to uplift and empower the spectrum of people around the globe is admirable. Knowing the importance that this collection would hold for global consumers, BAND-AID expedited the creation. Bridgette Bartlett Royall of Johnson & Johnson describes, “Normally, it takes 16 to 24 months to bring a new product into the BAND-AID^® Brand Adhesive Bandages line. OURTONE™ was developed for market in just nine.” 

While speeding up the generation process, BAND-AID did not want to discount the quality or thoughtfulness of the OURTONE line. To make sure these bandages were going to be a product that consumers would connect with, BAND-AID “partnered with Hero Collective  ̶, a Black-owned culture-driven, creative, and digital agency ̶ to help deliver a product that makes more people feel seen, represented, and valued,” Kimberly Wilson writes for Essence.  

Dawn Hampton, Vice President of Marketing, Consumer Experience Organization for BAND-AID further explains that the company developed OURTONE,

“…through listening sessions, looking at the competitive landscape, looking at the total care market, looking at adjacent industries to try and get as much inspiration to ensure that we were developing a product that was not just profound and true to everything that J&J represented, but was truly indicative of what this community, was looking for, and to be quite honest, what they deserved.”

We applaud BAND-AID’s fulfillment of its promise to communities that had not always been represented in the brand’s products.