HUMEN

Confronting a problem everyone wants to ignore by making an ad you couldn’t.

the problem

Pain, fear, trauma, feelings of inadequacy? Pfff. Man up, dude.

The British idea of ‘masculinity’ puts British men in a very British box: be strong, stoic; stiff-upper-lip, old chap—keep calm and carry on! But when you consider the most common cause of death for British men under fifty is when they do it to themselves, it might be time to rethink the tagline.

Of the 100 people who die by suicide every week in the UK, almost 75% are male, but twice as likely as women to say they have nobody to rely on for emotional support. So while it would seem men are struggling, the data shows they aren’t telling anyone, and it’s killing them.

On the surface, most of us should be fine—food in our bellies, rooves over our heads, TikTok on tap—who are we to complain? But for a lot of people, something feels wrong, right? You could probably give me a few reasons why too—let me doomscroll for twenty seconds and I’ll give you twenty more. Just follow the dopamine until you want to die.

So my little solution in order to feel like I was helping in some small way was to move into wellness advertising. Pretty niche where I’m from. But if I could bring my consumer, big brand, big idea sensibilities to places where people are actively trying to make the world a better place, that’s a start.

With a brand as strong as Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness behind me, I started thinking about who I could approach and HUMEN was the obvious choice. What with being a man, and no stranger to how it feels not quite knowing what that means anymore, I felt like I had something to say.

To cut a long story short, I thought that instead of just showing the ad that won a load of awards, it’d be insightful for you to take a look at a few of the others that got us there in the first place. And as I hope you’ve seen, I believe the first step in helping anyone open up about what’s closing them down, is by first acknowledging it happens at all.