Boys Do Cry
Gotcha4Life
Advertising
Design
Every day in Australia an average of seven men take their own life, making male suicide Australia’s #1 public health problem for men. At the heart of the problem is a narrative, handed down by generation after generation, which says that real men DON’T ask for help when they’re struggling, that they DON’T talk about their feelings, that Boys DON’T Cry.
We set out to help free men from this dangerous idea by turning the damaging traditional male DON’Ts into mentally healthy DO’s.
Tapping punk culture.
Punk bands from Sex Pistols and The Clash, to Souxsie and Patti Smith have revolutionised mainstream conversations and blasted social norms. With a punk approach, we too could put the middle finger up at convention, overturning the traditional male narrative.
Our punk approach started by adapting The Cure’s hit song, Boys Don’t Cry. Laced with irony, Boys Don’t Cry spits in the face of ideas about what a real man should be. And with Robert Smith’s blessing, we reimagined the song to become Boys Do Cry - an anthem for a new mould of masculinity.
Disrupting a nation – provoking discussion.
Launching with the same vigour and vitality as a song from a punk label, Boys Do Cry elbowed its way onto radio where it disrupted ad-breaks by playing the single in full.
The music video launched on social channels. PR outreach scored coverage in the Sun Herald, Daily Telegraph, LadBible and Mamamia, and airtime on ABC Radio National, Triple J’s Hack, Listnr, The Morning Show and ABC News Breakfast.
Additional videos featured the male singers from the film talking openly about their mental health, and we became the first not-for-profit campaign to use TikTok Creator Marketplace, briefing creators to ideate around ‘BOYS DO CRY’ and the message it stands for.
Punk inspired street campaign.
To create real change, we needed our message to stain the cultural fabric, stop men in their tracks and elicit meaningful conversations. A punk aesthetic was applied to OOH displays. Murals and small format targeted posters screamed ‘F*** the system’. Fonts and colours used were intentionally garish, and masculine norms were ‘dismembered and reassembled’, literally transforming DON’Ts into DO’s.
We even created a street mural that dynamically evolved over a period of time, altering the traditional male narrative to a more positive message.
Online resources to get men talking
Each of these initiatives directed men to the Boys Do Cry website - a repository for mental health resources. The ‘Get Cracking’ page provided men with a list of 10 things to do in moments of mental distress, along with contact details of partner initiatives encouraging men to speak up and seek help. The ‘Get Listening’ page provided men with advice on how best to support a mate, and provided them with an opportunity to connect with a ‘Gotcha mate’, another bloke they could openly discuss challenges with.
The campaign sent a message and saved lives.
Within the first three months of the campaign, over 41,000 people visited the Boys Do Cry website, 89% (36,861) of which went on to get further help through referral links to Beyond Blue and Lifeline. That’s a potential 36,861 lives saved.
+140M People Reached – 5x the Australian Population, smashing our 50% of Aussie men target.
+$2.7M Earned Media – 1.5x our goal and more than doubling Gotcha4Life’s previous best benchmark of $1M.
+52,000 social engagements (5x 12 month Target).
+51% of men exposed, increased their intentions to seek help (University of Melbourne, 2022). A monumental uplift amongst a culturally conditioned core, more than double our benchmark and 5x that of previous campaigns.
