Teens cope with a variety of issues big and small. They don’t know what resources are available to them and calling a “help line” isn’t naturally appealing to them. Kids Help Phone wanted to give them permission to reach out.

But this life-stage is about them asserting their adulthood. Which means solving things for themselves. They don’t want to be told what to do and they don’t want to be rescued. And the organization wasn’t going to do that.

Kids Help Phone just wanted to be their ally in time of need to help them tap into their own inner strength.

For a teen, life can be depressing and full of anxiety. But the majority filter that truth out of social media, burying their issues beneath a glossy, “perfect” profile. In doing so, it has created an illusion of perfection.

J. Walter Thompson wanted to break that illusion. The agency wanted to show that the lives teens portray on social media were different from the lives they were actually living. It wanted to shine a light on the real-life problems that teens face, and stand as an ally for any teens looking for help.

So, it created Instagram videos that looked like real posts but with audio that told unexpected and sobering stories that touched on different issues like eating disorders, relationships, abuse, and even suicide. Kids Help Phone then let them know that they could talk to the org about issues they normally wouldn’t talk about.

Each post ended with a strong call to action: “You can share with us what you can’t share with everyone else.”

Within one month, there was a 146% increase from last year in terms of calls received. There was also over 10 million total impressions (2.3x the impressions target), while re-targetting ads reached over 200,000 youth – generating over 1.6 million impressions. There were at least 2,263 clicks to the Kids Help Phone website, 1,052 new fans for the Kids Help Phone Facebook page, and based on Facebook’s ad recall rate (when asked within two days) an estimated 1 in 5 users would remember seeing a Kids Help Phone ad.