The Challenge
CALM – the Campaign Against Living Miserably – is a UK suicide prevention charity. They operate a life-saving telephone and WhatsApp helpline, available to anyone, 365 nights a year, from 5pm to midnight. In partnership with ITV – whose mission is to shape culture for good through brand and programming – they aim to ensure people end their misery, not their lives. Their life-saving work has never been more vital. In the UK, suicide is the single-biggest killer of people under 35. Youth suicide rates have hit an all-time high, with more kids taking their lives in the last decade than at any time in the country’s history. Over the last decade, this has amounted in 6,929 young people 15 – 24 years old taking their own life. But despite these alarming statistics, youth suicide is seldom spoken about. Only 15% of parents and carers have spoken about mental health and suicide with their loved ones, despite 2/5 young people experiencing a mental health crisis or suicidal thoughts. To address this epidemic and empower more adults to have life-saving conversations with children, CALM had developed the C.A.R.E kit. A simple online resource designed to arm every adult with the confidence and knowhow to talk to young people about mental health and suicide. Between the unacceptable tragedy of youth suicide and the potentially lifesaving C.A.R.E. kit, our mission was simple; ignite a national conversation about youth suicide and make adults believe they have a role to play in ending the tragedy.
The Solution
To protect young people from suicide, it was paramount we prioritised Trusted Adults; parents, teachers, coaches, or any adult closely involved in a young person’s life. We needed to put youth suicide on their radar in an unignorable way and show them the role they can play in ending the crisis. But if our idea was too immediately confronting, we risked them turning away, rather than leaning in. To overcome this, we needed a creative Trojan Horse. A campaign that subverts your expectations and draws you in, before revealing its intentions. Between our bright and colourful balloon installation, our film made with home-footage of Evelyn and our OOH which carried on the balloon motif, every touchpoint of Missed Birthdays was designed to draw people in before we landed our message. However someone encountered our campaign, our message was consistent -together we can end youth suicide, with the CALM C.A.R.E. Kit.