We all know there’s all sorts of holidays that marketeers want to use as a platform for talking about their product. But what if your product is trying to revolutionize mental health for humanity? At Headspace, my team got a brief to “celebrate World Mental Health Day” one year, but that didn’t quite sit right. 

Mental health isn’t a problem to be solved, it’s a way of caring for ourselves. Some days are good. But some don’t feel celebratory at all. The truth is, feelings come and go, and Headspace is here to honor and help with all the days—no matter how we feel. 

So our in-house creative team pushed back on the brief. We didn’t want to celebrate mental health like it’s a holiday—we wanted to create a platform for conversation and sharing. So we pitched using World Mental Health Day to create a platform to help everyone connect with each other and share their experience caring for their minds through social media. What came out of that was My Headspace, a movement to create space for folks to support each other and offer hope to anyone, however they’re feeling. 

We created a series of videos using real Headspace members Sucari, Patti, Ashli, and Chris, supported by what became a viral campaign to remind folks we’re all on a mental health journey—it’s just a matter of how we take care of ours.