FCB Aotearoa teamed up with Te Hiringa Hauora / The Health Promotion Agency to address the mental health of young Kiwis, with some surprising results.

It’s a confronting fact that Aotearoa has the highest youth suicide rate in the developed world. Young people in NZ are exhibiting high levels of mental distress, with a third of those young people not receiving support in the way they need.

TheLowdown.co.nz (Te Hiringa Hauroa The Health Promotion Agency’s youth mental health resource), set out to understand the most effective ways young Kiwis facing mental health struggles could be supported by their peers.

Traditionally, communication campaigns around this subject are targeted at the person suffering mental health issues, and not their support network. This approach could often be met with little or no engagement, as the sufferer is not inclined to take action; a major marker of deteriorating mental health: an unfortunate Catch-22.

But research suggested that, whilst young people desperately want to help their friends, they often don’t feel equipped to do so. They don’t realise support doesn’t need to be a full-on conversation and that just hanging out/being there is an extremely effective way to start helping.

Targeting the most vulnerable age range of 15 – 19, workshops with rangitahi were conducted which addressed this insight. The research findings were resoundingly confirmed and so ‘How To Do Nothing’ was created.

The campaign consists of five 60” online films, three 60” TVCs, Spotify and radio ads voiced by Kura star Dahnu Graham, Twitch partnerships, and a presence on Instagram and TikTok.

More than half of New Zealanders will experience mental distress at some point in their lives.

The National Depression Initiative needed to support these Kiwis to get to a place of mental wellbeing. Research showed we needed to motivate our audience to take control of their mental health – a particularly huge challenge when depression and anxiety elicits quite the opposite response. However, our small steps campaign did just that, with 66% of New Zealanders motivated by it.

More than half of New Zealanders will experience mental distress at some point in their lives.

The National Depression Initiative needed to support these Kiwis to get to a place of mental wellbeing. Research showed we needed to motivate our audience to take control of their mental health – a particularly huge challenge when depression and anxiety elicits quite the opposite response. However, our small steps campaign did just that, with 66% of New Zealanders motivated by it.

The Lowdown has been helping teenagers struggling with depression for the past decade. But it was time to move on – teens are more aware of the issue now and just want to cut to the chase.

We created a design language that empathised with the way they felt, using warts-and-all photography and colour system. It also let us encourage them into action, with easy self-help tips that worked for our mobile-first audience. All capped off with a new logo that captured this new sense of ‘progress’. The result was a contemporary tool to help teams get through the shit times.

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Despite reaching a record level of awareness about depression, most people weren’t doing anything to deal with it.

We knew information alone would not create the behaviour change necessary for self-help strategies to be an effective treatment.

FCB led a coalition of partners to create The Journal – an online programme that taught people the skills and helped put them into action. It was the first self-help solution in the world to integrate advertising, e-learning and live support services.

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