Mental health became a mainstream advertising topic in the 2010s as stigma began to recede and brands recognised that their audiences were ready for more honest conversations. The campaigns that have done this best - Heads Together in the UK, Bell's Let's Talk in Canada, Time to Change - have treated mental health not as a PR exercise but as a genuine commitment backed by structural change. At their best, these campaigns have contributed to measurable shifts in how people think and talk about mental wellbeing.
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The Bullet
- Granta Books · Jonathan Pelham · 2025
Cover for Tom Lee's memoir The Bullet. Bright sky pressed down by an inky black weight mirrors a mind under threat - calm surface over a looming darkness the memoir confronts.
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“Broken Souls” The Invisible Wounds of the First World War.
- The Museum of the Great War - Pays de Meaux · BBDO Paris · 2018
Thousands of soldiers came out of 1914 to 1918 with psychological injuries nobody had a name for, and were called cowards, committed, or subjected to brutal treatment. A century on those wounds are recognised as post-traumatic stress disorder. The museum and BBDO Paris use that gap between the suffe
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Followers
- Clínica Javier Prado · Fosbury Latam
Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in women and gives almost no early warning. The clinic makes that silence visible through the grammar of social media, where something can accumulate followers quietly and unnoticed until the number is suddenly serious.
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Mindy "#NOTEQUEMES".
- Mindy.cl
The LED signage of big brands promises a world that never closes, and the same permanent availability is demanded of the people beneath it. But like a neon tube run too long, a body has a limit. Across Latin America millions report sleep problems tied to stress and workload, and the campaign uses fa
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Life Happens
- Bupa · 2020
Health insurance is typically treated as a grudge purchase reserved for rare, worst-case medical crises, causing consumers to doubt its regular value. To build brand affinity, Bupa reframed health insurance from passive crisis coverage into active support for the unpredictable, everyday moments of l
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Stopping Suicide
- CALM · Witness Studios · 2024
CALM reframes suicide prevention from a complex clinical challenge into an urgent, everyday human responsibility. Tapping into the insight that people often fail to intervene because they assume signs of suicidal distress require specialist expertise, the campaign emphasizes that ordinary human conn
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Above the Waves
- Kaiser · 2020
Kaiser "Above the Waves". A brand spot framing resilience and rising above the surface.
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Flicker of Time
- Veteran's Affairs · 2024
Veterans Affairs "Flicker of Time". A spot honouring veterans and the passage of time.
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Help Is Part Of It
- frontline workers counseling project · TBWA\Chiat\Day · 2020
The Frontline Workers Counseling Project: free mental-health counselling for every Bay Area frontline worker, whatever their position. The insight: the pandemic's helpers were structurally last in line for help; the campaign's whole job is the permission slip - you're not alone, and it costs nothing
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Steps
- ikea · mother london · 2019
To launch its sustainable Greenwich store, IKEA asked customers to arrive the greenest way possible, on foot. The insight: a long walk feels daunting as a distance but manageable as a countdown, so 80 posters across South East London each displayed the exact number of steps remaining to the store, t
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Cyberbullying & Cyber harassment touches too many teens
- Fondation Jasmin Roy · Ogilvy Montréal · 2017
For the anti-bullying Fondation Jasmin Roy, Ogilvy Canada photographed students absorbed in their phones at school. The insight: cyberbullying's damage is invisible on the surface but total for the victim, so each student's hand reveals a shape that visualises the harm being inflicted through the sc
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Words Can Kill
- Armando Testa, Milan, Italy · 2015
Das Telefonbuch's campaign against verbal abuse: "violence is not just physical - words may impact as much as a punch." The idea renders language as physical damage, arguing that insults leave the wounds a fist would.
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Behind the #BraveFace
- Papyrus · TBWA\Manchester · 2017
Papyrus and TBWA Manchester tackle suicide, the biggest killer of under-35s, on the platform where young people perform happiness. The insight: social media rewards a curated brave face that hides real despair, so pairing an amazing online status with a suicidal real-life one, 2,000 friends but no o
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Faces of Fear
- LICRA · Publicis Conseil · 2021
LICRA and Publicis Conseil confront a newer, quieter racism: ordinary people who'd never call themselves racist absorbing prejudice through social-media hate. The insight: this racism is powered by fear, of death, of losing a job, of an invented enemy, that online messages make feel real, so Faces o
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Proposing? Kay Jewelers Can Help!
- kay jewelers · 2021
Men describe how they actually feel about proposing, and the honest answer is nervous. Kay concedes there is plenty to be anxious about in a proposal and narrows its own promise to the one part it can remove: finding the ring should not be another thing to worry about.
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Game Responsibly
- Battlegrounds Mobile India · 2021
Following intense regulatory scrutiny and the ban of its predecessor PUBG Mobile in India, Krafton needed to proactively address parental and societal anxieties over youth gaming addiction to secure its license to operate. The brand tapped into the domestic tension of parents viewing mobile gaming a
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Inner Workings
- Disney · Walt Disney Animation Studios · 2016
An animated short that literalises the tug-of-war inside one man between his cautious Brain, obsessed with getting to work safely and on time, and his impulsive Heart, which keeps steering him toward small joys - a swim, an ice cream, a stranger's smile. The insight is that a life run entirely by th
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Gamer Therapy
- Gamer Therapy · The Community · 2021
This initiative addressed the growing mental health crisis among young gamers who resist traditional clinical therapy due to social stigma and accessibility barriers. It tapped into the insight that gamers are most comfortable opening up and sharing personal struggles when they are in their natural,
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Year in Search 2021
- Google · Google Creative Lab · 2021
In a year of global recovery, Google's annual 'Year in Search' film went beyond a simple recap to reinforce the brand's human-centric role. The creative idea was built on the insight that search data revealed a collective desire for recovery, framing the year's zeitgeist around the central question
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The Rescue Code – Code AFK 505 | Saving kids from parental abuse
- Lifology · 2023
A fake piece of gaming slang - CODE AFK 505 - was seeded into online games as a distress signal, so a child being abused at home can type it mid-match and other players will know to get help. The insight is that an abused child is rarely alone in a room, but they are almost always online, and the on
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Social Bullets
- Kazoo · Area 23 · 2014
This campaign tackles the link between cyberbullying and teen suicide by making the intangible harm of online abuse feel viscerally real. The core insight is that digital words, while virtual, can inflict physical-level harm on teenagers' mental health. The creative idea, 'Social Bullets,' literaliz
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Trigger Blocker | Taking Charge of Your Digital World
- Apple · TBWA\Media Arts Lab · 2023
A proposed iOS feature, Trigger Blocker, would let people strip diet-culture content out of their own feeds, telling the algorithm to stop serving weight-loss and body-comparison posts. The insight is that recommendation engines optimise for engagement, and for someone prone to disordered eating the
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Masterclass of Happiness
- Visit Finland · Sekin & Co. · 2023
To translate its ranking as the 'world's happiest country' into a tangible tourism driver, Visit Finland created a literal 'Masterclass of Happiness'. The strategy was built on the insight that people are actively seeking the secrets to a happy life, and the Finnish connection to nature and balance
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Best Friend AI
- PEDIGREE · AlmapBBDO · 2023
To overcome adopter bias for specific breeds, this campaign used the insight that an idealized "dream dog" could be a hook to connect with a real animal. The "Best Friend AI" platform let users describe their perfect dog to an AI image generator. It then used image recognition to find and present a
Mental health advertising occupies a space where authenticity is non-negotiable. Audiences can immediately distinguish between a brand that cares and a brand that is performing care, and the consequences of getting it wrong are significant. The campaigns in this collection earned their place in the conversation by starting from a genuine insight rather than a marketing objective. That distinction is essential.