Australia is facing a male mental health crisis, and The Men’s Table (TMT) charity helps by providing a safe and supportive environment for men to come together once a month to talk openly about what they’re going through. All TMT Tables are founded and run by local volunteers, so in order to set up a new table, the organisation needs to recruit both would-be founders and members in local communities. At the time of briefing TMT was running 96 “Tables” (groups) in communities across Australia. Our brief was to help them grow their footprint by 10% and so hit and exceed their all-important 100 Tables milestone. As a not-for-profit organisation with extremely modest budgets, brand awareness was very low, so our objective was to drive awareness of The Men’s Table and the benefit of attending its meetings and so drive interest in running a Table or taking part in one.

Our goal was to cast not just a voice but an actor who could embody the midlife existential angst of reaching 50. Also key, was the ability to powerfully bring to life the contrasted duality of outer and inner voices. We workshopped the script with a number of actors swapping in and out and playing different roles, getting a feel for who gave most convincing and compelling form to our character in an audio world. Our ultimate choice for Matt - the Australian actor Alan Dukes, delivered a powerful performance. When asked how his fiftieth birthday was and “what’s new?”, he gives typically upbeat answers but his tone hints ominously that things aren’t going so well. Then in the delivery of his inner voice, he successfully portrays the mind’s tendency to take us into a downward spiral, with negative thought compounding negative thought in a staccato sequence of mental chatter.

This spot ran as one of three in a 4 week regional Australian campaign that targeted three different male demographics in four different regions. The campaign exceeded its target by over 100% helping The Men’s Table launch 20 new Tables, thereby increasing their national footprint by 21%.