Bagels by BENEE is a pop song, scientifically designed to reduce anxiety, created in a collaboration that brought together the worlds of music and neuroscience. It was released as an official single by New Zealand's biggest pop star across all major music platforms, giving people access to a free tool they can use in the moments they feel anxious.

New Zealand is facing a youth mental health crisis. Our Gen Z-ers are the most anxious generation in history, one in four suffer anxiety. Over half of this number do not reach out for support, so they suffer in what has been dubbed 'a silent pandemic of mental distress'.

ASB is one of the nation's largest banks, and since 2022 has been principal partner of New Zealand's largest mental health charity Youthline. Part of this commitment is ensuring more young people have access to mental support.

BENEE is New Zealand's biggest pop star, a member of Gen Z and outspoken mental health advocate.

Situation

New Zealand is in the grips of a youth mental health crisis. One in four young people suffer anxiety. Less than half of those that do, ask for help.

As principal sponsor of mental health charity, Youthline, ASB wanted to increase access to mental health support. But this is not a problem funding alone can solve. The more we advertised Youthline, the more pressure it placed on their call centres and counsellors. Youthline cannot afford to leave any young person on hold.

Brief

ASB wanted to reduce the number of youths that needed to call Youthline. 

Objectives

Create a digital tool that helps youths stop the downward spiral of anxiety. And make sure it reaches as many young New Zealanders as possible.

Our research showed that young people spend 8 hours a day on their phones, and an average of two hours a day listening to music. If we were going to help this young audience, we would have to reach them in their world.  

At just 23, BENEE is  NZ’s biggest popstar. An outspoken advocate for mental health, with a huge youth following – she was the perfect partner. So we used Benee’s popularity to successfully launch Bagels like a traditional pop song.  

Idea: Create a song with popstar BENEE that is scientifically designed to help young people with anxiety. 

The song was called “Bagels”. It was produced by BENEE and a team of neuroscientists using musical elements scientifically proven to reduce anxiety.

Insight:

We know listening to music is how many young people find space, and research has shown music can impact anxiety, our emotions, and mood. Young people listen to music more than any other age group, on average streaming music over 2 hours per day. 

Meditation-style songs do exist, but teenagers don’t listen to them. Thus, the primary goal was to harness BENEE’s fandom and launch our anxiety-relieving tool as a pop-culture hit. 

Over the course of several months, we worked with BENEE, her producer and neuroscientists from Auckland University of Technology to produce and refine a song using anxiety relieving musical elements.  

We then worked with the neuroscientists to weave anxiety-reducing therapeutic techniques throughout the visuals of the animated music video.  

Prior to launch, we tested ‘Bagels’ in the largest neurological study ever conducted on the effects of music on anxiety. And it worked, outperforming all other tracks at reducing short term anxiety in listeners.  

We then launched the song as an official single from BENEE, freely available across all major music platforms. The release was supported by PR in both mainstream and youth-focused media, as well as across the social platforms of BENEE, Youthline and ASB, to reach as many young people as possible.

In just two weeks, 'Bagels' reached the top of the NZ singles charts.

To date, it has been streamed 10 million times (our original objective was 2 million).

It has been added to hundreds of 'Chill out' playlists.

The track is also now being used as a therapeutic tool in classrooms and by counsellors across the country.

We set out to achieve 2 million impressions on ASB's owned social media channels. We hit 23 million.

With media coverage both in NZ and globally, the campaign reached an audience of 30 million people.

The project uplifted ASB's corporate reputation score by 9.9pts, higher than their sponsorship of the national rugby team.