Campaign highlights

During the Covid-19 pandemic, the mental health of frontline staff was pushed to its limits. Millions of key workers across the UK went to work on the frontline against Covid-19, while many others were putting their physical health at risk and their mental health under pressure to protect us all.

In response, we united with Samaritans, Mind, Hospice UK and The Royal Foundation of The Prince and Princess of Wales to launch Our Frontline, a campaign that provided mental health and bereavement support to all key workers via text and phone along with tailored online resources. Shout took more than 24,000 conversations with key workers at this time, with 89% saying the service was helpful to them.

As we hit a significant milestone of one million conversations with people in crisis, The Princess of Wales helped us thank some of our incredible Shout Volunteers, fundraisers, staff and trustees for their invaluable efforts in supporting people across the UK with their mental health.

Her Royal Highness spoke to three Shout Volunteers who shared their experiences of helping people who are anxious, stressed, depressed, suicidal or overwhelmed and who need immediate support, and how volunteering for Shout had positively impacted their lives.

We have been working with the Harry Kane Foundation since its launch in 2022 and are thrilled to have Harry to champion the Shout service. The England captain first supported us through in the 2022/23 football season, which saw the Shout logo feature on the front of Leyton Orient’s shirts.

We kicked off World Mental Health Day 2023 by featuring Harry on billboards across the country in a campaign that raised awareness
of Shout. As part of Mental Health Awareness week 2023, our #DoGoodFeelGood volunteering campaign shone the spotlight on the benefits of volunteering for your own wellbeing and saw Harry back on the billboards to encourage people to become a Shout Volunteer.

We launched a series of innovative fundraising events in 2022, led by our Patron Will Young with new initiative For One Night Only (FONO), offering a prize draw to the general public to win tickets by donating to Shout, to attend a unique experience.

The first events saw global music icon Ed Sheeran perform an intimate gig at London’s Union Chapel and comedian Eddie Izzard invite people to a preview of her solo performance of Charles’ Dickens Great Expectations at the Charles Dickens Museum, with proceeds going to support the Shout text service.

A huge thank you to the brand partners Marks & Spencer, ASOS and Chase UK for their generous support too.

As part of our work to reach diverse audiences, we conducted award- winning research with agency The Outsiders to inform a campaign aimed at supporting young black men with their mental health. With the research findings we worked with community interest company Create Not Hate to co-create a campaign with young men and boys from the audience we were most trying to reach.

The campaign ran across digital platforms used by the target audience, as well as nationwide outdoor ads and media placements. Funded by our partner Harry’s, the Let It Out campaign message was a simple one; you don’t need to hide behind a smile.