Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a severe form of depression which affects around 40 million people across Europe.

Despite this, there has been little investment in this category with no innovations in the last 30 years. Although depression is broadly understood, MDD remains hidden, stigmatised and misunderstood.

In a world where mental health is so widely discussed, we wanted to raise awareness of MDD to help people understand that together we can break depression.

Our objectives were to engage with healthcare professionals and the general EU public to encourage better conversations about MDD; helping those living with the condition to speak up and get the help they need.

Awareness KPIs: reach 10 million people in Europe within our 1st year and 50 millions by year 3.

Engagement KPIs: create 20,000 advocates in year 1 who will communicate that MDD is a serious medical condition.

Breaking Depression was centred around the symbolic insight that people with MDD feel broken. Using the ancient Japanese art of kintsugi we celebrated this feeling by creating Breaking Depression.

Translating to ‘golden joinery’, Kintsugi repairs broken objects with gold lacquer, treating breakage and repair as part of an object’s history, not something to be concealed, but instead celebrated. Analogous to managing MDD, it respects the cracks, while recognising that the repair is complex and takes time.

We wanted to create 20,000 social advocates, and double this in year two to 40,000 and in year three to 80,000. Our rationale? We know messages resonate better when they’re delivered by someone you know. The average social media user has 500 followers, so with 80,000 advocates helping spread our message, we’d reach 40 million – the equivalent population of people living with depression in Europe.

For the campaign messages to be delivered in the most engaging way, it required a multi-channel approach to drive maximum engagement. A soft launch to HCPs ensured the professional community was on board, followed by a full launch to the public, coinciding with World Mental Health Day.

Using a strategic measurement framework, we set metrics against our goals. We adopted a ‘fail forward’ mind-set; monitoring all our metrics fortnightly, spotting hurdles early and evolving our strategy as needed to stay on track

For the campaign to be delivered in an effective way it required a multi-channel approach.

A soft launch to HCPs ensured the professional community was on board first, followed by a full launch to the public, coinciding with World Mental Health Day.

Soft launch – Installation at ECNP congress: gaining the medical community’s support at the largest psychiatry congress in Europe. This was accompanied by out-of-home (OOH)/social media advertising; mapping out the delegates’ journey at the airport, bus shelters and hotels nearby.

Multichannel hard launch – Website: on WMHD we targeted the public with a dedicated campaign website that hosted all assets. To encourage conversation, we integrated a pledge functionality – allowing people to pledge their support and share.

Social media: by placing mini clips/gifs on Twitter/Instagram, boosted with paid spend to ensure we reached our target audience with an interest in mental health, we directed people to the website.

Between October 2019 and December 2020*:

• Awareness: we reached 42 million – over 4 x our target for year one.

• Engagement: 44,000 people pledging their support to our campaign via the website and Instagram – creating more than twice the target number of advocates for year one.

• ECNP congress installation: 82% of 1,600 delegates surveyed rated the concept as ‘high resonance’, exceeding our target of 80% positive/neutral feedback from 1,000 visitors at the booth

• OOH advertising and social media at ECNP: advertising gained 4.84 million impressions. Through 10 social media posts, we attracted over 10,600 engagements, 21x higher than our target for the four-day congress

• Website: 28,122 website views

• Social media: 648,000 views of our ‘making of’ video on YouTube, Instagram and Twitter, with 300,000 engagements

*(Please note: the copy on the written and video case studies show the 3 month metrics only).