In Flanders, every day 3 people die of suicide and 28 others attempt to end their life. The Suicide Line is a telephone and chat service that helps people with suicidal thoughts. But there are still a lot of calls that stay unanswered because of a lack of well-trained volunteers at the Suicide Line.

The goal was to recruit 50 potential volunteers that started with the training to have 30 well-trained volunteers left after training.

Potential volunteers have diverse backgrounds and personalities, which makes it difficult to target. On top of that, you can’t push or persuade people into becoming a volunteer. You can only try to awaken the potential volunteer, but only the ones who have it in them will take action.

We had to reach a very large audience but only recruit the people who had in them to become a volunteer. We created a social experiment to make people feel the importance of the Suicide Line and show potential volunteers what it’s like to help someone. The movie was titled “Would you answer this suicide call?” to make viewers think about what they would do. The video was shared on YouTube and spread via media relations to maximise reach via PR, which was essential in reaching the wide audience.

The video reached 2,96 million people in Flanders via YouTube views, media and press coverage. Result: 85 people started the training and the Suicide Line has 64 new trained volunteers to help answering the phone.

We placed a Suicide Line branded telephone booth in the middle of a square and let the phone ring to see who would answer it. The movie explained the importance of the Suicide Line and at the same showed that only few people actually answer the phone when someone is in need. The title of the video was “Would you answer this suicide call?” which was a direct question at viewers.

The experiment itself was a first important filter in recruiting the right people for the Suicide Line. By reaching a wide audience, awareness for the cause was created but at the same time the video became a first step in the recruitment funnel.

The video of this social experiment was launched on World Suicide Prevention day. We launched the video on YouTube, supported by a PR approach and Paid YouTube pre-rolls to create a wide reach from the start.

The total number of people reached with the recruitment campaign was 2.967.888 and 160.000 people watched the video on YouTube.

Response:

6676 potential volunteers visited the recruitment webpage. The goal was to have at least 1000 visits to generate 250 registrations. In the end 585 people registered.

85 people started the training to become a volunteer. In the end 64 new volunteers started working at the Suicide Line. The objective was 30 people.

With a success ratio of 76%, the number of volunteers that actually started as a Suicide Line helper after starting the training is much higher than the average of 40% during previous years.

With a total of 64 new trained volunteers to answer the telephone line and chat, the Suicide Line will be able to have 9194 more conversations with people in need. This means they can help avoid 203 suicide attempts and 33 suicides extra.