Thousands of marketers have been gathering in New York City for one of the biggest annual events in the industry. Psychological health and well-being have emerged as a primary focus.
Advertising Week 2022, now in its third day, has put a heavy emphasis on mental health.
2020 will go down in history as a bleak year, not only because of the rates of physical illness caused by the new coronavirus, but also because of the psychological impact of a global pandemic. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), about 1 in 15 adults in the US reported having a substance use disorder and other mental illness in 2020, and more than 12 million adults in the US seriously contemplated suicide.
Numbers like that are impossible for marketers to ignore.
As the world continues to find its footing in a post-pandemic era, many brands have become increasingly aware of the need to talk about mental health more openly, both with their customers and employees.
This was evident in this year’s Advertising Week schedule. Each of the four days of the event features at least one panel dedicated to mental health. (Ad Week is broken up into a series of panels, some of which have been held live at a venue on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and some of which were pre-recorded and available online.)
On Monday, for example, it featured a prerecorded event hosted by Arianna Huffington titled “From Languishing to Thriving: Solving the Burnout Crisis.” In her introduction, Hufington commented that “the crisis of stress and burnout predates the pandemic, but the pandemic has accelerated the crisis and put these issues at the forefront of all business agendas. And although we are dealing with this great epidemic, social unrest, [and] economic uncertainty, we are also at the same time grappling with incredible opportunities to redefine the way we work and live, because we are all recognizing that the old model of work, dating back to the Industrial Revolution, is broken.”
The next day (Tuesday), a panel of experts gathered on stage for an event titled “Let’s Talk About Men’s Mental Health.” In a memorable moment, one of the panelists, Richard Dorment, editor-in-chief of Men’s Health, spoke about the importance of staying honest and even vulnerable when approaching the topic of mental health: “The most important tool any of us have as a storytellers is personal experience and personal narrative,” he said. “So when people are more forthcoming about their challenges, when they’re willing to talk about what’s going on, in public or in private, that’s what changes minds and that’s what changes attitudes.”
Another live event yesterday, hosted by the VP of global brand marketing at popular meditation app Headspace, featured an in-person meditation session. Just a bunch of marketers, sitting quietly in a room in the heart of New York City, following their breath. (At one point, the host of that event acknowledged that marketers tend to be “a very stressed bunch.”)
It probably felt a bit strange to many people in that audience sitting in silence with their eyes closed for minutes and minutes. But given the vibrant dialogue around mental health at this year’s Advertising Week, who knows? Perhaps group meditations for marketers will soon become an everyday thing.
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