Where’s Your Head At? launches to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Week.
Bauer Media teamed up with mental-health campaigner Natasha Devon MBE and Mental Health First Aid England asking people to sign a petition to make a mental health first aid a legal requirement in the workplace.
We harnessed Bauer Media’s influence with a host of celebrity supporters to spread the word about our important campaign and engaged Bauer’s audience of 25 million people across the UK through our magazine and radio brands, including Grazia, heat, Closer, Magic, Absolute and KISS. The campaign also received outdoor space from media giants Ocean Outdoor and 8 Outdoor to help us expand our reach even further!
On October 8th 2018, we delivered a public petition of over 200,000 signatures to 10 Downing Street with London’s Mayor Sadiq Khan pledging full support for our campaign.
Following the petition, leaders from across business, education and the third sector signed an Open Letter (PDF) to the Prime Minister calling for legislative change to protect mental health in the workplace. The letter was exclusively published in The Telegraph, generated blanket national news coverage and led the Health and Safety Executive to update its guidance on the First Aid needs assessment to include further information on mental health.
In January 2019, the campaign gained new momentum when it was announced that the issue was going to be discussed in Parliament as part of a Backbench Business Committee Debate, following a motion tabled by Luciana Berger MP, Johnny Mercer MP and Sir Norman Lamb.
In the run up to the debate, we ran targeted outdoor advertising campaign in partnership with 8 Outdoor, encouraging people to tweet their MPs to get involved in the debate. On the day, MPs from the five main parties spoke in support of the issue, and the debate signalled overwhelming support for legislative change across the House.
To mark its first birthday, the campaign launched the ‘Where’s Your Head At?’ Workplace Manifesto – a mission statement for a mentally healthier working world. Organisations and MPs were encouraged to sign up to show their support for creating healthy workplaces where mental health is promoted and protected. Alongside MPs and employers, leading organisations from across the mental health sector including Mind, the Mental Health Foundation and Samaritans came together to support the manifesto’s calls.
The ‘Where’s Your Head At?’ campaign is continuing to raise awareness of its call for a mentally healthier working world at the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat Party Conferences. Ahead of World Mental Health Day on 10th October, hundreds of MPs signed our ‘Where’s Your Head At?’ Workplace Manifesto to highlight their commitment to parity of esteem – equality between mental and physical health – in the workplace and we lobbied all political fringe parties across England.
For World Mental Health Day we united all of our brands for a huge social media blackout - with each posting an 'out of office' between 1-2 telling our collective 25 million consumers that while 'social media is great, its important to remember to connect in real life by taking a moment to have human contact'.
In response to COVID 19 - all brands joined forces again with a nationwide social media campaign asking people to share how they're feeling with the hashtag #wheresmyheadat and tag three people they want to see in real life. This got huge traction and the conversation and hashtag is still ongoing.
We partnered with the royal charity 'Heads Together' for a star studded 'Mental Health Minute' in mental health awareness week. And we ran a series of radio 'specials' talking to their audiences about ways to cope at this difficult time.
The results of a study we commissioned with Instagram called 'Life after Lockdown' were released.
Grazia created a 'mental health special issue' featuring the findings and ran a week of activity on IGTV called 'Get your head together with Grazia' featuring interviews with stars and expert advice on different themes emerging from the study such as lockdown leading to three quarters of women (75%) wanting help and advice for anxiety, depression and loneliness.
Over half (57%) wanting people to be kinder to each other when “normal life” resumes, and almost two thirds (63%) reassessing their work/ life balance since being in Lockdown.