When you think about mental health, don’t you want to laugh a lot?
Humor is one of the most effective ways your brand can get noticed and be remembered. It’s not always easy, but if you can strike the right balance between tone and the funny bones of your target market, it’s golden.
Unfortunately, for most health brands, humor means pitfalls. The fear that it will be in bad taste or that people will feel disrespected is real. This fear of laughter most often means that we continue to seek inspiration from our patients as those who tug at our heartstrings or as brave soldiers.
In fact, a few years ago, SickKids launched a great campaign pairing the two with children as sore-eyed warriors fighting illness and injury. Although the VS Limits campaign received some criticism, it did its job, exceeding his $1.5 billion goal.
Being a mental health advocate requires a lot. There is so much stigma associated with mental health that anything that can further confuse the issue makes it difficult to use humor. But people who suffer from mental illness don’t always want to wallow in the dark images that often accompany stories of mental suffering. Unfortunately, for a long time, mental health meant a series of images that haunted people.
we include a large number of people
The reality is more dynamic. Even the toughest conversations about mental health can be about optimism, change, and recovery. You don’t have to follow the path of a warrior. It is possible to aim for humor, the holy grail of health care promotion, and succeed.
Ottawa Public Health has supported that approach. When speaking to social media director Kevin Parent, he said that public health departments are often crazy, but they can get away with it because first and foremost they are always authentic. That means they’re representing a variety of voices on their feed. Some are full of comedic relief. Some are serious, some sad, some educational and informative, essentially a spectrum of human emotions.
For example, during the pandemic, discussions about masks lost all humor for me, but still, my inner sci-fi nerd was tickled when they featured The Mascarorian with the quote “This is the way it’s done.” . You made a boring topic fresh and interesting.
“We do everything we can to stay authentic,” Parent says. “If you understand your audience and take the time to get to know them, you’ll know what they find funny. You’ll also know when you need a laugh. It’s not that what’s wrong is what’s right.
So, during the emergency phase of the pandemic, jokes about mask breathing may have been premature, but these days, most people have experienced this and will find it helpful.
In recent years, the medical field has expanded with the popularity of social media influencers and the recognition by medical professionals that the voices of people with lived experience not only inform research, but are important in everything from research to medicine. The constraints that have kept humor away are gone. recovery.
This shift in perspective was aptly demonstrated when Harvard University, a bastion of academic rigor, conducted a best practices education session with TikTok mental health influencers Rachel Habekost and Trey Tucker. Ta. This initiative provided better health information to the public through popular feeds. However, if the fit between knowledge and theater is not right, the partnership will not always be successful. No matter how well-intentioned the research is, if the content is not interesting, people will not read it.
Some experts advise healthcare marketers entering the humor field to be gentle. That’s not bad advice, but it makes the content a little bland. When the Mental Health Commission of Canada decided to relaunch it a few years ago, they wanted to shine a light on the brand and occasionally tickle some funny faces. This meant banishing images that evoked deep unhappiness. You know it too: a dark day, and a sad person sitting alone in bed, facing away from the corner. Usually painted in black and white to emphasize the gloominess of the subject matter. If that’s not enough, there are also lots of clouds.
silver lining
The change to an optimistic image was not easy. As many experts claim, mental health isn’t always sunshine and daisies. The challenge is understanding what your audience is looking for in order to digest great information.
I’m not alone in being drawn in by gruesome images and wanting to know, see, and hear more. I would also be out if I received a lecture that used technical terminology. That’s not to say dark and difficult times aren’t part of your mental health journey, but contributing to doom scrolling doesn’t seem progressive. It’s not that viewers don’t want well-researched information, but anyone who has experienced a mental health crisis knows that the process is not simple. Even within 24 hours, he has good times and bad times. No matter where you are on the continuum, a little humor can go a long way. Laughing a lot has been proven to reduce stress and tension, reduce pain, improve mood, and have many other benefits.
The problem is finding the right balance between information and entertainment. Infotainment is easy to say, but difficult to achieve. Explaining that laughter is the best medicine and citing a body of research is fine, but incorporate humor while responsibly informing your audience, which often includes at-risk populations. It’s difficult.
Mental health can be funny, but it can also be sad, scary, and complicated. For advocates, advertisers, and viewers, getting the balance right is not only essential, but also potentially life-changing.
Read more: No more doom and gloom: How we use photography to inspire hope.
Resources: Factsheet: Common mental health myths and misconceptions.
