The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has received complaints about the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM) suicide prevention campaign that aired back in June.
The mental health charity’s campaign, built around the phrase ‘Suicide doesn’t always look suicidal’, included a TV spot that featured real home videos of ‘apparently happy’ people enjoying life. Towards the end of the film it was revealed that all the videos featured were the last digital memories of people who later died by suicide.
The campaign intended to highlight the fact that suicidal behaviour does not always look like ‘reclusiveness, crying and silence’, and that, in reality, “suicidal behaviour takes many forms”.
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While the ad was in fact cleared by Clearcast, some people have complained to the advertising watchdog to challenge whether the ad was irresponsible and distressing and whether it was suitable to be shown before 9pm.
The charity responded by stating that “society’s standards around suicide need to be challenged and that was what the ad and their organisation intended to do”.
CALM’s CEO Simon Gunning told Marketing Beat recently: “If we understand that it happens to people that we recognise, rather than people that are abstract, then we can start to make it a part of our daily discourse and a part of our social function as a society by removing stigma.”
The organisation told the ASA that the ad needed to address suicide directly to prevent suicidal behaviour. While the charity recognised that the clip may have been difficult to watch, CALM said that the ad did not shock viewers without reason and any distress caused was “not excessive”.
The suicide prevention charity also explained the ways in which it consulted its ‘Expert Advisory Board’ and industry experts, including clinical psychologists, sociologists andmedical and care professionals, before making the ad.
Clearcast also said that the intent of the ad had been to show that mental health should “never be judged on face value alone”, noting that the intention was to “help save a life”.
Despite complaints, the ad authority found that while the presentation and message of the ad was powerful and shocking, it was made clear to the audience that the overall aim of the ad was to inform viewers about suicide and provide practical help to the audience to stop further deaths.
The ASA concluded: “Further, while we acknowledged the ad was likely to be distressing to some viewers, the overall message of the ad to look beyond the surface to save lives from suicide and seek support to facilitate that, meant that any distress caused was justified by the ad’s message.
“We therefore concluded that the ad was not irresponsible and did not cause unjustifiable distress.”
