Cannes Lions
THE ROYALS, Melbourne / BEYOND BLUE / 2021
Overview
Entries
Credits
Background
Beyond Blue delivers mental health and wellbeing support, with programs supporting depression, suicide, anxiety disorders. Our brief was to help raise awareness of Beyond Blue’s services in the context of the 2020 mental health crisis, and a covid-disrupted world where people find it harder to connect with friends. Success to be measured in web traffic, and support calls/engagements.
Idea
We created new media channels to reach this audience without spending extra budget. Using radio, social and an instructional website, we guided Aussies to use their Voicemail and OOO messages spaces to direct people to Beyond Blue support. These messages played off the media placements, demonstrating that Beyond Blue is always available for support in the moments you can’t connect with friends.
Strategy
The dark side of Christmas break.
Our strategy was built on two pieces of data.
1. The rising volume of calls for help that Beyond Blue deals with over the Christmas period. Demand for services increases by 20% every year
2. The Millions of Australians forced to take annual leave at Christmas. The result - a huge cohort of people away from their contactable devices; phones, emails, and computers.
Audience and approach
To be successful we needed to:
1. Recruit a large army of sympathetic supporters to dedicate their message space 2. Generate PR and earned media awareness for the campaign message
3. And most importantly, help people who are suffering from mental health challenges find the support they need
Call to action
For the army - update your voicemail with a message
For those in need - there’s always someone you can talk to at Beyond Blue.
Execution
The campaign used personal message spaces as media channels - so our work ran on the Voicemail and OOO messages of everyday Aussies and big Australian companies. The campaign launched in December just before the festive season - one of the biggest times of the year for mental health issues. The campaign ran on social channels, radio and direct to company emails.
Outcome
1.9 million impressions
Cumulative reach of + 500,000
Double the website average of return users
Increases call volumes
Increased social mentions