Mary Deacon has seen and heard the criticism of the Bell Let’s Talk Day initiative: That it’s nothing more than a PR scheme, an opportunity for a corporate monolith to wrap itself in a cloak of compassion and reap the business rewards.
But Deacon, a self-described “mental health do-gooder” who took over as chair of the Bell Mental Health Initiative in 2011, is adamant that Bell has taken a leadership position in a frequently misunderstood cause.
“Mental health has been an issue that’s been so seriously stigmatized and under the radar for so long,” said Deacon. “It is not the social issue that a company would stand behind in order to build a brand or reputation, or it would have happened before.
“This was about a company choosing to use its strengths and its brand to make a difference in a social issue,” she added. “I know ‘bupkis’ about telephones; I go to meetings and hear all these words and have no idea what these people are talking about.”
Bell Let’s Talk Day has raised approximately $67 million for mental health organizations since its 2011 inception, with Bell donating five cents from every tweet, text, call and share from Bell and Bell Aliant customers on the designated day. Its customers sent a record 109 million messages in 2014.
In advance of this year’s event on Jan. 28, the organization has released three new TV/YouTube spots that Deacon said are designed to do the “heavy lifting” around the fundamental issue of mental health: stigma.
“Their purpose is to provide people with some very simple, easy things they can incorporate into their daily life to help be part of the solution,” she told Marketing. “It is heavy-hitting anti-stigma work.”
The 30-second spots from LG2 were developed in association with Dr. Heather Stuart, the Bell Canada chair in mental health and anti-stigma research at Queen’s University.
They are designed to highlight five behaviours that can help eliminate the stigma attached to mental health issues: Watch your language, educate yourself, be kind, listen, and talk about it.
All three spots, “Paid Vacation,” “Toughen Up” and “Crazy,” employ the same tactic: They feature two people dismissively talking about someone suffering from mental health issues, using language like “crazy” and in one spot suggesting a co-worker is taking advantage of her condition to enjoy some paid time off work.
Each 30-second spot loops back to the beginning four times, with the first three times simply repeating. On the fourth occasion, however, one of the people breaks with what has gone before and acknowledges that the person might be suffering.
“They all have a similar perspective of ‘This is what we commonly do,’ and ‘Here are the really simple things we can all do to be part of the solution,’” said Deacon. “At the very heart of the issue of stigma is attitude and behaviour. One of the ways of changing attitudes and behaviour is by modeling good behaviour.”
The repetition is intended to be an attention-getting device, she said. “Once you’ve got somebody’s attention you can say ‘Here’s what you typically see – this is another way you could approach it that would help address the issue of stigma.”
A second wave of ads debuting later this month will feature national spokesperson Clara Hughes and three new spokespeople: comedian Howie Mandel; This Hour Has 22 Minutes star Mary Walsh, and TSN personality Michael Landsberg. They join Quebec spokespeople Michel Mpambara and Stefie Shock.
Deacon said a key way to change perception among the public is for them to have contact with people who suffer from mental health issues. “It challenges your perception of what these people are like,” said Deacon.
Debuting Jan. 12, the second wave of ads will include TV, out-of-home (including billboards, TSAs, bus wraps) and online. Media for the campaign is handled by Media Experts.
Deacon’s involvement with Bell Let’s Talk is more than just another job. She had spent her professional career with non-profits including WWF Canada and the MS Society, but when her 25-year-old brother David – a medical student at the University of Toronto – committed suicide in 1991, it set her on a new path.
“It changed my life,” she said. “I needed to do something to make a difference.” In 1999, she took a job as fundraising director at Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), spending 10 years with the organization prior to arriving at Bell.
Another brother, Ted, took his own life in 2003 at the age of 39, while Deacon herself has been treated for depression. She has also lost a niece and a cousin to suicide.
“That Bell would hire a mental health do-gooder to lead this initiative, to make sure it was authentic and effective and connected with the community says a lot,” she said. “The platform Bell has created for passionate mental health advocates like myself is unprecedented in this country.”
