‘Schizo: The Movie’

In summer 2009, we built upon the success of our launch campaign by creating two new harder hitting online films.  The films aimed to tackle the most damaging myths about schizophrenia  – possibly the most misunderstood mental illness. 

We wanted to reach people who know little about mental health issues and who are harder to reach through traditional advertising campaigns.  The films aimed to communicate with people using their frame of reference.  They were developed with the input of people with direct experience of mental health problems, and featured Stuart, a media volunteer who has a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

‘Schizo: The Movie’ relies on people’s fascination with the sinister to get them to reconsider their attitudes.  It takes people on a journey – from a point of fear, falling back on stereotypes of people with schizophrenia, all the way to the realisation that people with mental health problems are not like the stereotypes. It points out that it is the support of friends and family that have been a deciding factor in this man’s life.

The movie first ran on popular websites, and was so successful that in spring 2010 we re-ran the film as a movie trailer on nearly 1,000 cinema screens nationwide.   In March 2010, the movie was awarded the 'Best Use of Video' prize at the industry-leading Revolution digital awards.

‘Kids Party’ works on a similar basis – except this time, people think they are about to see real video footage.  The film was seeded into video sharing sites like You Tube. This concept relies on ironic humour to allow people to reconsider their attitudes without feeling like we are pointing the finger at them.

How did they do?

During our summer 2009 campaign, the online films had a massive impact with over 446,000 people seeing ‘Schizo: the movie’ trailer and just under 65,000 viewings of ‘Kids Party’. 

They delivered something extra through their more hard-hitting style and our tracking showed that compared to other media channels, the films were stronger at communicating to people that they should change their attitudes and showing how they could help a friend.