India has recorded highest number of suicides in the world and is heading towards mental health epidemic (Economic Times). Suicides among the youth are increasing and mostly due to reasons like heartbreaks, exam pressures and not being able to fit in to their social circles. Despite this, suicide is not talked about and is under-acknowledged by youth and parents. The National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP) suggests that suicide can be prevented if the signs are identified to provide the right help. Thus, Suicide Prevention India Foundation, wanted to spread awareness among masses about methods of preventing suicide and how the ‘Gatekeeper Program’ (a training program that helps understand the hidden yet obvious signs of suicide) could be a big help in saving lives.

We created a never-seen-before interactive video experience that transcribed the signs of suicide using YouTube's ‘subtitles’ feature. Target audience being the youth, the story revolved around the life of 5 college friends and urged viewers to watch the video twice, first with subtitles feature ‘OFF’ and then with the subtitles feature ‘ON’. The video deceives the viewer by making him/her focus on one character but when one replays the video with subtitles ON, one notices how they misread the obvious signs of suicide. The campaign leveraged YouTube’s feature of subtitles as a stand-in/metaphor for learning the Gatekeeper Program and hence, was named #GiveSubtitlesToSuicide.

Suicide was the leading cause of death among those aged 15-39 in 2016 in India. We needed to find an innovative way to make the severity of suicides a national talking point. YouTube reaches 85 percent of all highly engaged internet users (18-plus years) in India who watch a video within 48 hours of it going live. Thus, we leveraged the platform to create an interactive video experience that transcribed the signs of suicide using YouTube's ‘subtitles’ feature. The campaign let the audience understand that if given ‘subtitles’ to a person’s obvious signs, a life could be saved. Viewers were encouraged to subscribe to the Gatekeeper Programme. Campaign promotions were focussed across digital platforms and consciously involved social handles of colleges and training institutes as well. We associated with Indian Institute of Technology, which is at the helm of the issue, to talk about prevention methods, reasons of suicides etc.

The campaign was designed in a 360 degree manner – online and offline. It was launched on YouTube marking the Suicide Prevention Day followed by promotions on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. This sparked conversations across platforms, leading to Miss Malini (a prominently followed Indian blogger and Twitter influencer) who has undergone depression, to come on board voluntarily to help promote the campaign. Bollywood celebrities also came onboard to promote the video and the Gatekeeper Program. Youth targetting native media articles were published, which were cross-promoted across platforms and social handles of colleges. To reach one of the most profoundly-impacted target segment - engineering students, Suicide Prevention India Foundation tied-up with Indian Institute of Technology alongwith colleges all over India as part of mental health outreach programs. Hard-hitting posters of the campaign were put up across colleges for recall and awareness.

163 M organic Impressions were garnered

The campaign reached out to over 18M unique audiences, registering over 5800 Sign-ups for the gatekeeper training program.

Families of victims and some survivors actually voiced their support online for this much-needed campaign

The video was screened to 100,000 students in IIT through partnership with Suicide prevention Foundation India.

More than 50 colleges signed up for conducting the Gatekeeper program in their premises.

10,000 hours were spent by people on learning Suicide Prevention India Foundation’s QPR-Gatekeeper training programme.

The campaign registered 8000+ Tweets

The campaign video registered 184K+ views on YouTube