Suicide is a heavily gendered issue. In the UK, 8 out of 10 people who kill themselves are men. It is now the single biggest killer of young guys in the UK. But very few people know that fact. And even fewer are talking about it.

A combination of deeply engrained cultural pressures and male gender expectations in the UK has resulted in the country having one of the highest male suicide rates in the world. In the UK, from a young age, guys are told to ‘man up’ when faced with an issue. Showing your emotions is still perceived as a sign of weakness. The stereotypical British ‘stiff-upper-lip’ is still a core expectation of being a man. Inevitably, this leaves guys vulnerable and alone when things go wrong.

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

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.

What was the Brand visibility after the campaign? Any impact on sales?

The objective from the brand’s perspective was to change brand perception amongst its core audience, presenting the brand’s more mature point of view on modern masculinity. Due to the nature of the campaign we invited people to join an ongoing conversation around the issue itself as well as Lynx's new proposition as a brand that cares about all issues that affect men. Whilst we are waiting on sales and brand equity results given that this campaign was only live in November 2015, the following available metrics suggest the campaign has exceeded expectations in this respect as we expect to see this reflected in the data when it is available.

-Social engagement rate within our core social channels was 32% higher than we usually see, throughout the campaign period.

- Overwhelmingly positive sentiment towards the brand

- Within our own channels (10:1 ratio of positive to negative comments within our core social channels during the campaign period

- From influencers and celebrities who had previously openly criticised the brand actively engaging with the campaign (the most notable being Stephen Fry, who in 2014 had declared on Twitter that wearing Lynx “should be illegal”. Fast forward to November 2015, and who should be among the biggest voices in the #BiggerIssues campaign? Mr Fry himself. He was just one of 27 million Twitter handles reached by @Lynx during the campaign). This has resulted in a number of key influencers now actively engaging with the brand on a wider basis (Shaun Ross, Anthony Joshua and Tom Odell amongst others).

-From Parliament (MP David Nuttall commended Lynx during the first ever parliamentary debate on the issue for its bravery in getting involved in the issue)

- Royal recognition The Duke of Cambridge invited Lynx (in partnership with CALM) to become part of a national action group on the issue (Coalface Coalition launched in May) as a result of seeing the campaign in his own social media feed and feeling compelled to get in touch and get involved. Demonstrating not only the brand’s visibility as a result of this campaign, but also offering the brand and even broader platform.

A truly perception changing result for the brand, offering it huge visibility on what was in practical terms quite a restricted budget.

- Donations to the Charity, CALM, increased by 357% YOY during the campaign period compared to the previous year.

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’re 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 highly reactive and provocative approach was designed to capture the interest of young men who are often turned off by more ‘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, encouraging them to get male suicide talked about more than any of those trivial topics.

In 2015, leading male grooming brand Lynx (Axe) partnered with the UK charity CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably). The intention was to leverage the influence of Lynx among young guys to get them talking about the ultimate ‘unmentionable’ topic – male suicide.

Lynx has always been a brand tied to masculinity. The brand has often taken a fun, tongue-in-cheek point of view on being a man, which has cemented it in the lives of millions of British guys. So when the number of young men in the UK taking their own lives began to reach crisis point – at least 1 guy every 2 hours – Lynx wanted to act. Now more than ever, Lynx needed to demonstrate it could be a brand for men in a really meaningful way.

In framing the message as coming from a youthful brand-charity alliance, rather than a charity alone, it presented an opportunity to raise awareness of suicide amongst the group who are most affected by it, but least likely to want to talk about it.

Lynx developed the #BiggerIssues campaign, with the objective of increasing awareness of the fact that suicide is the single biggest cause of death among young British men.