Five years ago, The World Health Organisation officially recognized “burnout” as a disease.

Today, 44% of Danish youth is feeling burned out. And the number of young people suffering is increasing.

One of the most serious issues of our time is the mental health of our youth. The pressure from social media, the pandemic and ever accelerating expectations are creating a generation of young people with mental health issues.

Danish Broadcast Cooperation, The Ebbefos Foundation and Østifterne wanted to spark a national debate and create awareness around this topic by launching a Mental Health Day in schools across the country. Something that had never been done before.

But to make the schools dedicate a full day and join the initiative we would have to create national awareness and spark interest in the project – ultimately making them sign-up to participate in the first ever Mental Health Day.

To raise awareness about the 44% of the young generation who are burning out, we created five human-sized statues made from 100kg of candle wax and placed them in the five biggest cities of Denmark.

To create them we used +100 faces of young people and merged them into one - representing an entire generation.

With 70 days of burning time and placements in some of the most popular places in Denmark the statues showed what happens if we don’t act now.

Each candle had a plaque stating the issue and a link leading to a landing page to partition schools to sign up for the Mental Health Day.

Small versions of the candles were given to politicians and other stakeholders, encouraging them to spark a national conversation around youth and mental health. Furthermore, digital AR-versions were created, urging the public not to let an entire generation burn out.

We developed a strategy that consisted of three phases:

Awareness

We created a symbol that in a simple and interesting way dramatized an issue that is not in itself visual or easy to recognize. At the same time, we had a very limited budget and needed to leverage news media and borrowed interest to put the subject on the national agenda.

Recruitment

We produced hundreds of smaller versions of the candles that was sent to schools asking them to sign up for the initiative, further amplify our message.

Education

The first ever Mental Health Day became a massive success. With more than 93% of schools signing up for a full day of education and discussion about mental health, massive media coverage and a commitment for the Mental Health Day to return in 2024.

We wanted a powerful and emotional symbol and created a range of human sized candles to represent a whole generation of youth that is slowly being affected by burnout.

Each of the statues are made from candle wax that symbolises what happens if we don’t act: Our inaction could lead to an entire generation burning out.

Each candle weighs around 100 kg. and will take approx. 2 months to completely burn out. Serving as a very real countdown – and a symbol of the current state of the youth.

The candles are placed in the five biggest cities of Denmark and will also make appearances in different news programs on the broadcaster’s channels.

To outline the impact of the Burnout Generation initiative we need to outline the initial objective. The project needed to achieve the following:

Objectives

• Visualize an invisible issue and spark a national debate.

• Motivate schools to sign-up to the first Mental Health Day.

• Get 70% of students to participate in the project.

Both the Burnout Generation and the Mental Health Day outperformed expectations.

Results

• We reached 1.4500.000 Danes.

• Featured in the most important news programs and national papers.

• 70% of the schools took part in the first ever Mental Health Day.

• We engaged more than 100.000 students (93% of our target audience).

• The ROMI has been calculated at 4.2 by Meltwater.

But perhaps most importantly it has been decided the Mental Health Day will repeat in 2024.