Bigger Issues
Every two hours a guy in the UK kills himself - A shocking statistic no one was talking about. I went to Lynx with a brave and challenging idea; that we should be tackling something that effects our audience in a devastating way. This was phase one - raise awareness of the issue and get it on the public agenda. The results were incredible, 100 million conversations, a first ever debate in parliament and the interest piqued of the Royal family...
CLIENT LYNX YEAR 2015 ROLE CREATIVE DIRECTOR
1 IDEA 1000'S OF HEADLINES
The campaign stemmed from a simple premise; no one is talking about the biggest killer of young men in this country - so what are they talking about? We took the trending topics from Twitter and turned them on their heads as the 'bigger' topics than suicide...
We turned these topics into the lifeblood of our campaign- for 3 weeks, every 2 hours (the rate of suicide in the UK) we took the hottest topics and updated 600 nationwide DOOH screens (including Piccadilly circus) , Facebook posts and tweets with these subjects.
AN OUT OF HOME FIRST
The guys at DOOH built us a bespoke CMS , an ambitious first of its kind system that allowed us to tailor our message regionally and reactively.
INFLUENCERS
We got CALM to open their 'little black book' to their celebrity and influencer contacts. We asked them to post in their channels the things they posted that week that were statisically bigger conversations than suicide. From Professor Green to Stephen Merchant to Tulisa- their response was immense.
All our ads and posts directed towards our microsite which (live) compared the hot topics with the number of conversations about suicide. We asked people to join our Thunderclap and for one day lend their Twitter or Facebook voice to talk about this killer - We smashed our target of 5m voices within 2 days , and hit 23 million by the end of two weeks.
CONTROVERSY
It took us over a year of background preperation and disater scenario planning - but overwelmingly the responses were so positive. We had to deal with a few complaints from shopping centres in some regions of the UK but were quick to respond with ads that challenged the negative voices.
PARLIAMENT
Thanks to the campaign, on International Men's Day, we secured the first ever Parliamentary debate on male suicide.
"I think we should pay tribute to whoever it was who took the brave decision to link a men’s grooming product with this issue. Others perhaps looked at it and thought, 'The issue is a bit too touchy for us. We’ll leave that one alone.
Whoever was involved at Lynx, we should publicly thank them for being able to associate their brand with that particular campaign."
Philip Davies MP
ROYAL INTEREST
Not only did we raise awareness by 43%, created 100M social impressions, and increased CALM donations by 4x; Prince William & Harry saw the campaign in their feeds and wanted to get involved. They are now patrons of the charity.
