THE CLIENT

The Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) is an award-winning charity dedicated to preventing male suicide, offering vital support to men in the UK, of any age, who are down or in crisis.

THE CHALLENGE

84 men a week take their own lives in the UK. That’s over four thousand lives that are tragically lost each year. Despite this, suicide remains a stigmatised, silent killer which is not talked about in the media, and which is under-acknowledged by culture at large with people being unable to appreciate and unwilling to address the magnitude of the problem. This was unacceptable, and we wanted to do something to change this. We wanted to create something that stopped the public and government in their tracks and made them pay attention, with media channels that made the topic as real, human and visible as possible.

THE IDEA

Without any allocated media spend, we needed to find an innovative way to make the scale and severity of male suicide a national talking point, and then provide meaningful ways for the public to act in response. From this need, Project 84 was born.

At the heart of Project 84 were 84 hyper-realistic figures representing the 84 men who take their own lives every week. Across a series of workshops, bereaved families were guided in American street artist Mark Jenkins’ signature tape casting technique to produce the hyper-realistic figures, which were then clothed in drawn-shut hoodies to highlight the isolation often experienced by those facing depression and the way so many men suffer in silence. These were then displayed atop ITV’s iconic Southbank tower.

Through forging a partnership with ITV's This Morning who devoted a week of programming to Project84 and male suicide, the campaign drove people to the CALM helpline/website to find much needed support, and to sign a grassroots Change.org petition to make male suicide and bereavement a ministerial responsibility, leading to a parliamentary discussion of the Project.

THE IMPACT

The campaign stopped people in their tracks, and using art in an innovative way, sparked an important cultural conversation. A week after launch, we had achieved more than 2.1 billion earned media reach. The campaign drove an increase of 34% in demand for the helpline and webchat support, and the associated government petition gained worldwide attention, receiving 390K signatures and leading to the appointment of the first ever UK Minister for Suicide Prevention on World Mental Health Day.

By changing the London skyline, we had incited much needed conversation around men's mental health and suicide throughout the capital, the country and abroad. More importantly, however, every pound saved by the charity on media was money spent directly on helping men in crisis.