Marketing: Annual Review 2021 – 2022

…From panic stations to posters for passengers…

In 2019, we were approached by Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM), the body that coordinate transport services across the region, to become our charity partner. Their plan was to run events to fundraise for Manchester Mind. Due the pandemic these plans never left the station. In April 2020, we had an online meeting to discuss the opportunity to use unsold advertising space on the tram network at a highly discounted rate.

This all sounded fantastic but as the trams travel across Greater Manchester we needed to refine an appropriate message, which would not cross paths with any other local Mind. So service and fundraising messages were out.

It was panic stations but once this subsided and the decision to move forward was made, a flash of inspiration stopped us in our tracks. During our journey through the pandemic we had been sharing wellbeing information on our website and social media. What if we were to gather this information in one location to create an online wellbeing hub? Even better what if the messaging of the campaign focused on snappy headlines and a self-care checklist as a way to get people on-board and encourage them to go online? Our posters with links to how to look after your mental health would be up on most of the tram networks!

Turnaround ended up being incredibly speedy as some unsold space in their advertising schedule quickly appeared. What was meant to be a four-week long campaign ended up being much longer. The timing was perfect as it landed as we finally came out of lockdown and people were returning to work. The posters also remained in place throughout the summer holidays, and amazingly TfGM put them up again in October for a few more weeks.

The results by far and away exceeded our expectations, with the posters driving a huge amount of traffic to our website (nearly 18,000 page views to the wellbeing hub from July 2021 to end March 2022). Having a hidden landing page meant we could see that the posters were generating many of those online journeys. But what was even more reassuring was all the people sharing the wellbeing hub digitally and giving their thoughts and feedback about it with us.

This was really exciting for us and better still that the new Mind brand could be utilised to perfection.

Access our self-care hub here.

“I wanted to give some positive feedback on a poster I saw in Manchester’s Deansgate Metrolink Station. An 8 item mental health checklist, succinct and powerful gamification of wellbeing. Really appreciated it and I’m certain many others will too.”