The document discusses four mental health awareness campaigns: 1) The Mental Health Foundation's campaign used strange posters to draw attention to mindfulness as a way to cope with depression. 2) The #MyDefinition campaign at University of New Brunswick featured people defining themselves beyond their mental health issues. 3) Amnesty International's campaign portrayed people confidently to challenge prejudice and discrimination against those with mental illnesses. 4) The NHS's "Stamping Out Stigma" campaign used emotionally expressive portraits and negative words to show the lasting impact of mental health discrimination.

1. Existing Products
Scott Harrand

2. “What’s playing on your mind?” Mental Health Foundation campaign
The Mental Health foundation’s campaign on
mindfulness, a technique for coping with
depression, employed the use of an
interesting poster campaign.
The campaign is
strange and eye-
catching, to draw in
the audience’s
attention, not only to
the strange figures
in the image, but
also to the cause
they are trying to
promote and raise
awareness for. The
advertisement is
also memorable,
which means, by
extension, the
cause is
memorable.
Having such odd
and almost
disturbing imagery in
their campaign
provokes the
audience to read the
information provided
in the text, in order
to seek an
explanation for the
image.
While the model’s
faces are all
obscured, the
campaign shows a
fair bit of diversity on
a range of
demographics, such
as gender, ethnicity,
and with suggestions
of varying ages and
The individual posters
show grey backgrounds, in
contrast to significantly
brighter clothing. This may
suggest that untreated
mental health issues can
give you a bleak world

3. “#MyDefinition” UNB Student Union
Campaign
The #MyDefinition campaign was started by the
student union of the University of New Brunswick.
The aim of the campaign is to end the stigma
surrounding mental health issues, and to teach
people not to judge people solely based on their
mental health issues. The campaign consists of a
series of posters of real residents of the university,
combined with their names, that are written in the
same font and format of an official dictionary
definition, listing their positive traits, as well as
mentioning their mental health history crossed out,
to signify that it “my mental health is a part of me,
but it does not define me.”. On the campaign
website, the posters are accompanied by the real
stories of the people in the posters about their
mental health has affected them. The campaign has
a simple, but effective premise, and uses a range of
different people, including a balance of genders and
a few people of an older age, in order to best identify
with a broader audience. The people in the posters
are shown in fairly regular situations, often looking
quite calm and often happy, with regular, everyday
settings around them. This seems to be done to
drive home the fact that people with mental health
issues are just normal people, which is one of the
aims of the campaign.

4. Amnesty International Campaign
This campaign, from Amnesty International, seeks to end prejudice and discrimination
against people with mental health issues. The campaign takes portrait images of
people in front of grey backgrounds, combined with writing in the black and yellow that
is synonymous with Amnesty International. The text is generally written to show that
the prejudices that people with mental health issues face, and how this prejudice can
effect them just as much, if not more than, the mental health problems themselves.
The way the images of the people are shot make them look confident, proud, powerful
and defiant, which paints a positive image of people with mental illnesses. The tagline
running throughout the series of posters reads “Mental health problems don’t
discriminate, people do.”. The campaign seeks to end prejudices against people with
mental health issues, and raise awareness for how such discrimination can affect
people.

5. “Stamping Out Stigma” NHS Campaign
This campaign from the NHS aims to show the negative
effect that mental health discrimination can have on people.
The campaign utilizes a dark, black background that almost
seems to consume the central figure in darkness. Over the
mouth, there is a ripped shred of paper effect, with word’s
like “rejected” or “nutter” written on them, words that reflect
how they are made to feel or words that other people use
unfairly against them. The campaign drives home the fact
that this discrimination leaves lasting, negative effects on
people. The models used stare directly into the camera,
often with emotional expression in their eye, in order to
create empathy with the viewer. The text above their heads
tends to give a short explanation of the sort of discrimination
the person in the poster experienced, in order to combine a
human face (that the viewer can identify with) and a sad
reality of what can happen to people who suffer mental
health discrimination and how it can affect them. While much
of the poster is made in black and white, parts of it that the
campaign makers seem to want to draw attention to are
made in bright red, to draw attention to them and to help
them stand out in contrast. These parts include the logo of
the campaign, “Stamping Out Stigma”, which is also made to
look like an actual stamp, as well as parts of the text, with
the word “discrimination” written in bright red text in order to
make it stand out. Red also tends to have negative
connotations, so combined with the word discrimination, the
colour usage seems to be done to further emphasize
discrimination is a bad thing. Also in red, but most likely for
emphasis, is the website for the campaign, which means
that it can be more easily seen despite it’s small text, and
therefore making it easier for people to find information on
the campaign.