Case Study:

Rethinking attitudes to mental health

A statue of Winston Churchill in a strait jacket shocked the nation earlier this year.

But it made people rethink their preconceptions about mental health – and that’s just what the organisation Rethink wanted to achieve.

And when the mental health organisation wanted to find out if its campaign had been a success, they turned to Marketry because, in the words of its senior policy officer, “of all the companies that submitted a tender, Marketry had the most informed and impressive knowledge of social research”.

Marketry and Rethink developed a two-stage questionnaire in partnership for people in Norwich, where the pilot campaign was held, to gauge their attitudes to mental illness and awareness of Rethink.

Marketry found that, after the campaign, people felt they understood more about mental illness and were more positive towards people affected by it.

What had the strongest impact was the statue of Winston Churchill which stirred up controversy and was noticed by 80 per cent of the respondents.

Only 10 per cent of people Marketry surveyed felt the statue was unacceptable, showing that controversy can be a highly effective way to generate media coverage and change attitudes.

And Rethink were particularly pleased to see that Marketry’s evaluation identified areas which needed further investigation.

Adele Greaves, senior research and policy officer, said: “This extra analysis was fantastic. Marketry’s work on this campaign had such an impact that it is being used to form the basis of another similar project which we are planning for Northern Ireland”.

Client:

Rethink

Adele Greaves

Senior Research and Policy Officer