The campaign used social listening to fuel a reactive campaign that highlighted all the trivial things we are more than happy to talk about, and the one thing we are not.

From new emojis to cat memes, trendy superfoods to trending Christmas ads, #BiggerIssues held a mirror up to all the real-life, real-time things that our live social data showed were dominating guys’ conversations. Topics that were statistically ‘bigger’ than suicide.

The campaign used this provocative messaging as a platform to encourage people to perform a simple social action – signing up to have an automated Tweet sent from their Twitter profile. In doing so, they would be helping to get male suicide talked about more than any of those trivial topics.

Live social listening powered a national campaign spanning social, online banners and digital billboards – with creative executions drawing upon whatever inane subject was monopolising newsfeeds at any given moment.

To really dramatize the scale of the problem – and reflect the rate guys currently take their own lives in the UK – we created new headlines every 2 hours, 24 hours a day, for the duration of the campaign.

Creative was regionally tailored, based on social data insight. So when fog descended on London, digital billboards across the capital were updated in real-time to reflect the local online chatter about the weather. Or when a 90s rock band announcing their come-back gig created a lot of social buzz in Manchester, the creative served in that area was immediately updated accordingly. The result was hyper-relevant, timely versions of the ads all around the country.

This one campaign did more to raise awareness of the issue than anything in the last ten years. According to YouGov, knowledge of male suicide increased by 45% nationally over the campaign period, and by 120% in London.

There were 20,000 online mentions of #BiggerIssues, with a social reach of 108 million impressions. As the campaign climaxed, #BiggerIssues trended across the country. For one day, we got everyone talking about this bigger issue.

The number of men feeling confident enough to come forward and talk about their problems increased drastically (over 5,600 helpline calls in the campaign period alone).

Finally, the exposure that #BiggerIssues gave the issue resulted in male suicide being debated in Parliament for the first time. This was a truly historic breakthrough, made possible by a powerful creative hook executed in an impossible-to-ignore way.

The Lynx #BiggerIssues campaign galvanised unprecedented support around a highly taboo issue with a clever creative hook executed across nationwide digital billboards, digital advertising and social media.

Across each of these environments, the campaign creative was updated constantly in real-time based on real-world events. The result was a highly engaging, seamlessly integrated campaign that combined creative bravery and digital innovation to make a real difference.

This creative use of real time social listening allowed the campaign to grab people’s attention with topics we knew they were talking about in any given moment. This was a ‘way in’ to engaging them in a topic they’re not talking about: male suicide.

The highly reactive approach was designed to capture the interest of young men who are often turned off by ‘traditional’ cause messaging. By drawing our audience in with a highly topical pop culture reference and juxtaposing it with male suicide, the campaign was able to convey the scale of the issue in a way that made guys sit up and take notice.

Exploiting the reach and influence of Lynx amongst young men in digital spaces, whilst targeting high-footfall physical spaces where we knew our guys would be, ensured our messaging was seen by the demographic most vulnerable to suicide, but least willing to talk about it.

In the UK, 80% of people who kill themselves are men. Suicide is now the single biggest killer of young guys in the UK. But few people know that fact. Even fewer are talking about it.

Various cultural pressures have resulted in the UK having one of the highest male suicide rates in the world. Guys are told to ‘man-up’ when faced with an issue, rather than talk about it.

Despite the alarming statistics, the issue had never been debated in Parliament. And it certainly isn’t talked about on the streets. This trend will continue unabated until we start talking about the scale of the problem openly.

Male grooming brand Lynx (Axe) partnered with UK charity CALM to develop the #BiggerIssues campaign, with the objective of increasing awareness of the fact that suicide is the biggest killer of young British men.