#DoItDay: Helping Parents and Children to #Take20
Mental health affects 1 in 4 adults and 1 in 4 children in the UK. It’s an issue I understand all too well, so when I heard The Drum were hosting their #DoItDay hack on World Mental Health Day to support mental health charities, I jumped at the opportunity to get involved.
Six weeks ago, I was part of the winning #DoItDay team for the children’s mental health charity, YoungMinds. Our idea was simple – we wanted to launch a campaign to encourage parents and children to take time out together and create opportunities to talk about mental health.
What began as a campaign to promote existing resources on the YoungMinds website became something bigger and longer lasting for the charity. They loved the idea so much that they wanted it to become a platform of its own, so we worked with them to create a #Take20 parents’ hub packed with helpful tips and advice.
Bringing the campaign to life
It was a hectic six weeks packed with conference calls, media deadlines and a couple of late nights. The team at Undercurrent did an amazing job of visually bringing the campaign to life. They portrayed the connection between parent and child through hands and overlaid the imagery with sketches and the YoungMinds colour palette to bring them to life.
A couple of members of the team wrote and recorded a Podcast ad for the Sue Atkins Podcast.
Our Head of Video created a short video to play inside London taxis. It was also used to promote #Take20 on #DoItDay.
Myself and Naomi from Coull worked on some of the the content for the parents’ hub.
Kicking off #DoItDay
#DoItDay saw us launch the parents’ hub through media in addition to a stunt in Regent’s Park. Wearing the YoungMinds colours, we headed down Oxford Street and caught the Tube, giving out flyers and speaking to people along the way. We set up a football match in the park and invited passers-by to join in. A quick kick about showed just how easy taking 20 can be and was just one of the idea included on the hub.
The results
#Take20 appeared on both the Spotify and Guardian apps, Verifone media spots in taxis around London, in the Financial Times, the London Evening Standard and the Sue Atkins podcast.
It also had some fantastic coverage in the Huffington Post, the Metro and will be appearing in the Sunday Times this weekend, in addition to mentions from Rebecca Vardy and parenting blogger, This Mama Life.
It achieved a reach of over 300,000 online on the first day and saw lots of engagement from parents and YoungMinds supporters.
Finally…
I want to say a huge thank you to The Drum for organising Do It Day, to YoungMinds for such a fantastic brief and for really getting behind our campaign idea. Last but by no means least, thanks to the YoungsMinds Do It Day team (I’ll name check them below) for giving up so much time to make it happen.
The YoungMinds Do It Day team:
Lucy Wakely – Undercurrent
Emily O’Keefe – Undercurrent
Segun Malomo – Undercurrent
Imogen Almond – RPM
Alex Kosterman – Impero
Naomi Sandercock – Coull
Sarah Hannington – Microsoft
Jenna O’Keefe – Good Agency