There's Something About Julie

Whether it's acne products or emergency contraception, Julie Schott is upending industries and erasing stigmawith her trademark sense of humor.

- By Véronique Hyland. Photographed by The Tyller Twins.

Two women’s hands extend toward each other, gripping the treasure on the shelf they both covet. We’ve seen this trope before, but this time, the women aren’t sparring over a Manolo Blahnik, but rather a Julie-brand morning-after pill in colorful packaging. In the commercial, written and directed by comedian Esther Povitsky, the strangers engage in the opposite of one-upmanship (one-downmanship?) to prove who needs it more. “My boyfriend has a podcast about crypto,” one laments.

You’ve probably never seen a pharmaceutical ad like this—which is exactly why the brand wanted to make it. “Why can’t an ad sound like the group chat? Why does it have to go through the pharma filter of seriousness?” asks Julie cofounder Julie Schott. Amanda E/J Morrison, another cofounder, tells me that when they first took the script to their compliance team, they were told, “‘That’s not how a pharmaceutical commercial goes.’ And I was like, ‘Well, show me the language where the FDA says that.’ The reality is, that language didn’t exist. It was just, everybody was doing what everybody thought they were supposed to do.”

“There’s a way to laugh your way in,” Morrison says of the brand’s approach. That could mean anything from selling merch (a “Dump Him”–style baby tee that reads “Sex Happens”) to billboards with slogans like “When you’re not ready to be a mommy influencer.” When asked to distill the Julie sense of humor, Schott says, “Go on TikTok. Everyone’s hilarious. I don’t want to make it about generations, but millennials are so self-serious, and like, ‘Story time, this is what happened.’ And that’s not it.”