Highmark Mental Health Campaign

There’s a mental health crisis in the United States. With limited access to therapists, people are having to wait to get crucial mental health care. And with the addition of a stigma toward people that need support, many are suffering in silence.

At Highmark, we wanted to breakdown both of those barriers to mental health care. We created a campaign that spoke access to mental health care providers, and barriers preventing people to getting the care they need.

Our creative team developed a concept all about embracing what you have on the inside. With the creative, we showed how everyone has more going on than what they show the rest of the world with the creative placement of emotions. By allowing our characters to wear their emotions, we could address the stigma. And since Highmark increased their number of therapists, we made it possible for everyone to get the mental health care they need in a shorter amount of time.

We were able to identify three key archetypes with varying priorities to receive our message: the striver, who actively works toward better health, the preventer, who stays healthy now to avoid problems later, and the maintainer, who wants to maintain health and independence with minimal effort. In lower funnel communications, like social and display, we created separate pieces of creative to speak directly to each audience.

In our upper funnel messages, like print and TV, we kept our message broad and relevant to all of our archetypes. With the help of the production company Joinery and director team The Queen, we created a :30, :15 and :06 second spots that brought to life our key message: because what you have on the inside deserves to be seen.