The brief
Reaching out for help with mental health, particularly for teenagers, can feel overwhelming. This is especially true if mental health services feel uninviting and impersonal. Kooth, an online well-being community, wanted to change the perception of mental health services by implementing a youth marketing strategy.
Kooth, which supports young people between 11 and 25 years old, needed a serious refresh to its brand identity to encourage more young people to seek help.
As an anonymous online community, Kooth wanted to avoid its services appearing distant and unappealing. Ready to throw out the stock imagery, Kooth needed to better represent its users’ experience with its services and make it more accessible for young people.
Our solution
Using our Gen Z experts to create a youth marketing strategy for Kooth was a no-brainer. After all, we place content creation directly into the hands of our young consultants, tailoring the service around client needs. Using our creativity, and through close collaboration, we generated youth-perspective insights for Kooth across a two-year project. Our aim throughout was to ensure Kooth’s marketing collateral was completely aligned with the needs of its audience.
The very nature of this service means all content is made by Gen Z with Gen Z in mind, but it was essential to Kooth to consult not only young people but its service users themselves. To fulfill this need, we recruited from Kooth’s network across the UK, to give a representative example of authentic lived experiences.
During our youth content partnership with Kooth, we delivered:
1. Workshops: equipping young people with content creation skills
We began by hosting a content creation workshop session in Birmingham, recruiting from our young network up and down the country, all of which were familiar with Kooth’s work. The session empowered them to create user-generated content for Kooth, equipping them with the right knowledge and skills.
We trained them in a range of skills, from practical camera operating and editing to understanding ethics. This meant participants could create high-quality content throughout our project that was not only creative, authentic, and inspiring but also sensitively made.
As our youth voice and influence officer, Jess Akinbodunshe said:
“There’s a lot that goes into ensuring content serves the demographic, particularly when it comes to language.
“For example, using terms like ‘movement’ rather than ‘exercise’ hold different connotations, so it’s important for content creators to be familiar with this distinction when speaking about mental health.”
As an added bonus, all participants acquired an AQA accreditation in content creation off the back of the session.
2. Collaborative video production for the wellbeing campaign “Go Somewhere Good”
We helped shape Kooth’s summer campaign “Go Somewhere Good”, which showcased the value of movement for improving mental health. Our young experts and UK-wide influencers created a range of person-led videos that gave first-person insight into the power of doing small things everyday to boost wellbeing.
During Mental Health Awareness Week, we also empowered young men from our network to talk about their personal experiences, so Kooth could share this insight on its social channels. Allowing our young creators to shape the narrative of their content meant these short videos authentically captured their feelings. This was especially impactful as men, in particular, face stigma surrounding vulnerability.
3. Refreshing website and social pictures to show its real-world impact
To inject personality into Kooth’s website and social media feeds, we organised a professional photoshoot to showcase young people in their element, whether it be within nature, doing a sport, or hanging out with friends.
To shape the creative direction of the day, we recruited eight service users to take part and asked them what they do on a day-to-day basis to look after their wellbeing. The results captured were natural and organic, and meant Kooth could replace its previous stock imagery with pictures that fully reflected its audience.
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- Engaging young people in conversations about mental health to shift perceptions and promote understanding.
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- A young woman with curly hair and sunglasses performs guitar at a youth mental health awareness event outdoors, promoting positive perceptions.
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- Two young individuals enjoying basketball on an outdoor court, highlighting youth mental health, sports, and community engagement.
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- This image depicts a young person engaging in outdoor leisure, highlighting mental health and youth engagement in positive activities.
4. Launching a youth-led podcast episode: Feelings About Failure
A key driver of isolation and poor mental health is feeling like a failure. Many young people find it shameful to make mistakes and instead strive for perfection. To combat this fear of failure, our team facilitated a candid conversation between four Kooth service users to discuss what failure means to them, encouraging more openness on the topic.
This discussion was transformed into a podcast episode to shift perspectives around failure and help young people understand that mistakes are normal, whether in their social life, school, or workplace.
Impact
- 58 young people took part, all of whom were Kooth service users
- More than 130 pictures captured for Kooth’s refreshed imagery
- Our young experts generated more than 30,000 views on Kooth’s Instagram channel for its ‘Go Somewhere Good’ campaign.
Testimonial
“We have loved working with Participation People – a brilliant, thoughtful team who have listened to what we need, answered the brief perfectly, and always go the extra mile! The projects we’ve worked on so far have enabled us to connect with young people in a meaningful, authentic way which is exactly what we were looking for.”
Gemma Campbell, clinical content lead, Kooth
Conclusion
Our work with Kooth highlighted the impact of empowering young people to create authentic, meaningful content to boost a brand’s awareness and connection with this audience. We successfully integrated young voices into its marketing strategy, making the organisation confident that the results were made with its audience in mind.
By recruiting and supporting a group of diverse young people, we captured their lived experiences, resulting in a unique set of content for Kooth’s website and marketing collateral, which brings the brand to life.
“Working with Kooth was such a fantastic experience for me, as I am very passionate about working to battle the stigma surrounding mental health issues. Kooth is a perfect example of doing this and giving young people a platform to raise awareness about mental health issues and wellbeing.”
Stasia Smith, Young Consultant and Young Content Creator
Are you interested in learning how our Gen Z experts can enhance your brand strategy? Contact our team today!
