Ask Them

Client: SAMH
Sector: Charity, behaviour change, campaign
Services: Film, strategy, concept, script, direction

There’s a great deal of stigma around thoughts of suicide, making it hard to discuss - just when a frank conversation is exactly what might help the most. Our campaign for SAMH, Scotland’s national mental health charity, aims to reduce the pressure around saying ‘that word’.

Read

Discover

SAMH asked us to help normalise talking about suicidal thoughts. They provided us with extensive research but to really understand we spoke with people who had experienced thoughts of suicide, attempted suicide, or lost someone through suicide.

Develop

We knew we had to capture the emotion on both sides of this conversation, and help people build the courage to ask the question everybody’s afraid of; ‘Are you thinking about suicide?’ and then show the relief of starting to really talk.

Deliver

With our partners Forest of Black we filmed for two days, with another for audio recording. The ad runs on prime-time broadcast TV, with edits created for Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn – plus special 15-second shorts for TikTok.

Stop Play

We learned how difficult it can be for those with suicidal thoughts to open up, and how difficult it is for the people around them to find the right questions to ask. There are many barriers:

• Feeling scared by the severity of the word ‘suicide’.
• Being worried about offending the person they ask.
• Feeling ill-equipped to have the conversation.
• Being scared of what answer they might get.
• Knowing something’s up but believing it’s ‘not that serious’.
• Feeling that someone else would be better equipped to deal with it.

“It feels like a dance. I’ve known someone for 30 years, and I think ‘please ask me now …’ and they don’t - even after I’ve said to them ‘I’m at my lowest point.’ I needed permission to say that ‘S’ word.”

Facebook

Twitter

work