Lloyds Bank's Time to Talk Day Campaign Encourages Us to Break the Stigma on Mental Health

Lloyds Bank’s winning ad campaign of the Channel 4 £1m Diversity in Advertising Award launches exclusively on Channel 4 on mental health awareness Time To Talk Day (February 2nd, 2018).

The adverts will feature celebrities – including Professor Green, Jeremy Paxman, Rachel Riley and Alex Brooker – as well as members of the public and Lloyds Bank colleagues playing a variation of the ‘Who am I?’ sticky-note guessing game, to explore the common misconceptions about living with a non-visible disability.

And to coincide with the campaign’s launch, a new Lloyds Bank and Mental Health UK survey, reveals that although improvements have been made in how society thinks about mental health, 75 per cent of people still think there is a stigma attached to the issue.

Lloyds Bank and creative agency, adam&eveDDB, created the mental health adverts after winning Channel 4’s Diversity in Advertising Award, set up by the broadcaster to improve diversity in advertising.

As the award winner, Lloyds Bank will receive £1m worth of advertising airtime on Channel 4. The competition invited entrants to put forward creative ideas featuring non-visible disabilities.

Channel 4’s Sales Director Jonathan Allan said: “Producing an advert that puts non-visible disabilities at its heart was a demanding brief and it’s been a real pleasure working with Lloyds and adamandeveddb as they developed a fantastic new campaign that makes people think more profoundly about mental health.

“If this campaign can encourage the public and advertisers to think a little harder about all aspects of diversity, it can help make a real difference to people’s lives.”

Catherine Kehoe, Managing Director, Group Brands and Marketing, Lloyds Banking Group, said: “We’re immensely proud to have won the Channel 4 Diversity in Advertising Award. We recognise that anyone can be affected by mental health problems and the more we can do to normalise the conversation, the better it is for everyone. Our advert aims to get people talking about mental health as it affects 1 in 4 of our customers, colleagues; everyone” 

Mat Goff, CEO at adam&eveDDB said: “The hidden nature of some of these mental health problems mean that they are not talked about as much as they should be, and people often don’t know how to start the conversation. This campaign, thanks to the commitment of Channel 4 and Lloyds Bank and all the people brave enough to speak up in it, will help start thousands of conversations at home and at work that otherwise might not have happened.”

Lloyds Bank has been working with Mental Health UK to launch #GetTheInsideOut which will appear on the adverts. #GetTheInsideOut campaign will encourage more people to speak about mental health and aims to inspire those living with a condition to speak up about mental health.

The campaign, which also runs on All 4, will be launched in final episode of Hunted on Thursday evening. The first centre break at around 9.12pm will open with a 10” premier break and tailored voice over, where the iconic Channel 4 blocks have been turned green. This will lead to the first of two 60” creatives and the break will end with the second version of the ad.

The second and third centre breaks will include four 10” pledges from Alex Brooker, Ade Adepitan, Professor Green and Victoria Pendleton supporting the #GetThe InsideOut campaign.

Research from Lloyds Bank and Mental Health UK, undertaken by YouGov, found that seventy-five per cent of respondents feel there is a stigma in Britain attached to people with mental health conditions. And 88 per cent feel society needs to do more (much more (62%) or a little more (25%)) to better understand mental health issues.

The survey reveals that 67 per cent of respondents think people are more comfortable talking about mental health conditions now than they were five years ago. And people feel that the four main factors behind this change were – celebrities talking about mental health (70 per cent); media stories about mental health (70 per cent); societal change (68 per cent); and charities raising awareness (56 per cent).

But the research also reveals that 74 per cent of respondents think people would be fairly unwilling (62 per cent) or not willing at all (11 per cent), to discuss their own mental health issues.

Managing Director of Mental Health UK Brian Dow welcomed the research commissioned by Lloyds Bank and said: “We have come a long way in a short time to raise awareness. In large part thanks to the hard work of the charity sector, campaigns like Time to Change, a willingness of celebrities, notably the Royal Family, to talk about mental health and positive engagement by the media.

“Nevertheless this research shows that we cannot rest of on our laurels – there is a lot more that we need to do.”

Although the survey showed that people think significant steps have been made in the past five years on people’s awareness of mental health, more still needs to be done.

The survey discovers that compared to five years ago:

-72 per cent of respondents think that society  has a better understanding of mental health conditions 

-69 per cent feel people empathise more with people with mental health conditions

-70 per cent think society is more aware of the everyday realities of living with a mental health condition 

-70 per cent also feel there is more awareness of mental health issues raised in the media 

In addition:

-Fifty-six per cent of respondents said they’d feel comfortable talking to someone they don’t know very well about their mental health.

-While 37 per cent said they’d feel uncomfortable, with over half (57%) of this group concerned that they might offend the person  and a similar proportion (56%) worried they would embarrass or upset them