One in three South Africans will suffer from a mental illness, but there are fewer than 200 mental health professionals in the national public health system. As a result, many people face stigma and misunderstanding, even from those who should be offering them advice and treatment. Our main contributor was one of those people, and throughout the piece we hear about his experience and how he is helping things to change. We want the audience to realise the challenges that people with mental health can face in countries with underdeveloped mental health care provision. We want to promote understanding of the symptoms and treatments of mental illness - as a lack of appropriate knowledge and training was one of the obstacles that faced our case study. This film also showcases the brand’s direct help in combating this issue, and the improvements to access that now exist as a result.

The film starts with a reconstruction, showing our main contributor alone and crouched over in the corner of a small room, meant to portray the mental health breakdown he experienced. Paired with appropriate sound, the fast cuts illustrate the confusion and trauma of the emotions he went through, while fighting to be understood by the health professionals who were in charge of his care. We found it to be a powerful way of showing what he went through, and really helps to take the audience to the heart of what he is saying at the time – that he felt he had been treated as an animal, that no one would tell him what was going on, and how isolating this was.

The objective of the film was to raise awareness of the progress that the brand has made both to industry insiders, experts and policymakers, and to the end users who may benefit from their support. This was achieved by a three-pronged strategy, firstly targeting healthcare industry experts, insiders and policymakers, who were reached by releasing the content in partnership with the Non-Communicable Diseases Alliance. It was screened at their global summit in February 2020 and announced via NCDA channels to their influential membership. The work was also distributed to relevant groups of BBC online browsers globally, segmented thanks to first-party data into groups like ‘NGO/charity workers’ or ‘heath devotees’. They were reached with banner advertising promoting the series hub on BBC.com and third-party sites through programmatic. Further, a paid social media campaign targeted potential end users in the relevant region on Facebook and Twitter.

This film formed part of our Turning the Tide series, formally launched on 9th February 2020 with a screening and discussion at the NCD Alliance Forum in Sharjah. The dedicated hub website that hosts the content launched on the same day, as did the digital #TurningTheTide campaign, co-ordinated by BBC StoryWorks with the involvement of the other series stakeholders. The aim was to drive as much traffic and attention to the hub website, rather than to any individual film; to this end brand partners were requested to prioritise promotion of the series as a whole over their own piece. A six-week paid Facebook and Twitter campaign is underway, while banner advertising on BBC.com and third party sites will continue for a year. As new films are added to the site, with other content including surveys and written articles, BBC StoryWorks will coordinate partners in renewed outreach to their audiences.

As the distribution campaign is ongoing, the outcome in terms of figures is changing daily, but from the numbers accessible, our series had achieved 1.38 million views on Facebook in the first two weeks, with 192,800 on Twitter. This individual film achieved 40,209 views on Facebook, and 9,495 views on Twitter. The outcome at the NCDA forum launch event was a clear success, reaching a global audience of over 25 countries. Our brand gave qualitative feedback, confirming that the piece highlighted the issues raised in a sensitive and powerful manner.