ITV made an ambitious commitment to get 10 million people to take action to improve their mental and physical health by 2023. We felt it was time to tackle mental health as well as physical health. According to the ONS, mental illness is the largest single source of burden of disease in the UK.

We launched ITV’s landmark mental wellness initiative – ‘BritainGetTalking’ – making sure the campaign wasn’t just a marketing stunt, it was embraced across the whole organisation. We did everything from disrupting shows, to editorial content, to a special adbreak and internal resources too. This was a highly complex and potentially controversial campaign. Together, we went for it. 

To launch we interrupted ITV’s biggest family entertainment show Britain’sGotTalent and asked people to get talking while the show went silent for a minute.  We followed this with the UK’s first silent adbreak, a month of activity with shows and talent asking people to get talking across the channel and print advertising.

We planned to bring back the campaign for MentalHealthAwarenessWeek in May2020, but then coronavirus hit. As the country went into lockdown, we knew we had to do something sooner. With a turnaround of 6days, we got AntandDec to record a special message on their last day in the studio, reminding people to keep talking. It aired to 9.5m viewers the weekend before lockdown. They encouraged viewers to send messages of support across social. ITV played out hundreds of these audience messages across the channel for a month. Over 6.1m people have made calls or sent texts to friends and family as a result. 

‘Britain Get Talking’ made a difference. The initial launch was the most recognised mental health campaign in the country at 36% awareness.  Nearly 2.8m adults said they took an action to improve their mental wellbeing as a result of the campaign.  

The relaunch in response to Covid-19 built on the launch success. Over 6.1m people have made calls or sent texts to friends and family directly as a result of the campaign. According to new research from video ad tech company Unruly, ITV’s ‘Apart. But Never Alone’ was the most moving UK coronavirus campaign. Meanwhile, ‘Clap From Our Carers’ measured as ad of the week by System1. They said, ‘the 2-minute film really hit the emotional spot for viewers, scoring an exceptional 5.2-Stars’. ‘Britain Get Talking’ is again the UK’s most salient mental health campaign.