The Ad Council and creative agency FCB work together to spread mental health awareness with Adobe Express

Since the Ad Council was founded over 80 years ago, it has had a profound impact on American culture by addressing pressing issues facing our nation, including seat belt safety, the dangers of wildfires, COVID vaccine education, and now mental health.

As a nonprofit organization, the Ad Council achieves such broad influence by working with an impressive network of partners, including hundreds of nonprofits, media companies, corporations, sports teams, influencers, and creative agencies. In order for campaigns to reach as broad an audience as possible, they need to employ tailored messaging. The challenge for the Ad Council — how to empower partners to customize content for their specific audiences while reinforcing the campaign through consistent branding and messaging?

The Ad Council, with Deborah Leiter, senior Vice President of Campaign Development in the lead of its Mental Health Initiative, partnered with FCB Chicago and FCB New York, Interpublic agencies, to solve the customization challenge and in the process unlocked a new standard for collaboration between brands and agencies by developing a campaign playbook with Adobe Express.

As part of the Ad Council Board of Directors, I have always been proud of the contributions that the Ad Council makes towards using creativity for good. I recently attended Cannes Lions 2024 with representatives from the Ad Council and FCB to talk about this new campaign: “Love, Your Mind”.

Expanding conversations about mental health

In 2022, the Ad Council team announced a multiyear mental health initiative with a founding gift of $15 million from Huntsman Mental Health Institute (HMHI). “We started asking industry and government leaders about the biggest issues facing people today, and what we heard loud and clear is that mental health is something they’re all concerned about,” explains Leiter. “Given this momentum, we saw a unique window to convene around the issue and get more people talking openly about it.”

The initiative includes a series of campaigns focused on fostering a society that is more open and proactive when it comes to mental health, by addressing the unique needs of distinct audiences. The “Love, Your Mind” campaign, from HMHI and the Ad Council, is their latest effort offering inspiration, community, and educational resources to encourage people, particularly Black and Hispanic men, to make their mental health a priority and become more open and proactive around discussions of mental health. “Love, Your Mind” launched in October 2023 with an initial focus on reaching Black and Hispanic men, followed by a series of new creative work to engage specific audiences across the country.

“Love, Your Mind’ assets available in the campaign’s Adobe Express Kit.

Knowing that success comes with reach, Leiter’s team turned to the creative whizzes at FCB. The FCB teams set to work creating a powerful creative concept, which they brought to life with a series of PSAs as well as a playbook that would empower campaign partners to produce unique content. The goal was to maintain a consistent look and feel with elements that can be tailored to diverse audiences and work for any platform, from social media posts to billboards towering over freeways. The result: a digital campaign playbook for “Love, Your Mind,” the first Ad Council campaign to use Adobe Express to reach a broad audience. The playbook provides brand guidelines and custom templates so the Ad Council’s network of partners can amplify and reinforce messaging to their audiences.

Collaborating with partners through brand playbooks

Michael Aimette, Chief Creative officer at FCB New York, was impressed by how quickly Adobe Express allowed designers to create campaign guidelines with custom fonts, colors, logos, images, and other creative elements. The “Love, Your Mind” campaign relies heavily on social media templates developed for platforms like TikTok and Instagram, that empower partners to create custom posts while preserving the campaign style.

The digital playbook increases team collaboration so that all members of FCB and the Ad Council can see new assets, notes, and suggestions with ease.

“Getting different people in different places to coordinate can be difficult,” says Aimette. “Adobe Express is very easy to use and gives us a collaborative space where our FCB New York creative teams can share ideas and edits with our Ad Council contacts in real time. That’s invaluable.”

Assets developed using the “Love, Your Mind” Adobe Express Kit for a custom Reddit partnership with the campaign.

Staying on brand across hundreds of partners

The Ad Council's Adobe Express templates are available online, giving partners access to only the most up-to-date and approved asset versions. This allows the Ad Council and FCB teams to maintain control over branded elements, such as logos, while providing partners with the flexibility to customize other elements to create messages ideally tailored to their audiences.

“Adobe Express enables us to reach people at scale,” says Mike Williams, former Executive Creative director, FCB New York. “I’m usually a little nervous about how people will use content, but Adobe Express allows us to build in a system of checks without limiting partners’ creativity.” Not only does this help “Love, Your Mind” spread its message, but it serves as a roadmap for how FCB can disseminate information to clients and partners for future campaigns.

So far, the Ad Council has shared the “Love, Your Mind” campaign playbook with a wide range of partners, including major social platforms such as Meta, Pinterest, and Reddit. Because the playbook is easy to use, more partners can work with it, whether they’re a professional design agency or a mental health influencer. Partners create more engaging and branded content — and have generated over 900,000 visits to LoveYourMindToday.org so far.

“Creating a playbook in Adobe Express for our “Love, Your Mind” campaign gives us a foundation to maintain integrity and branding for our work,” says Leiter. “It provides an effective way for media and agencies to partner with us and deliver quality, on-brand content.”

Assets developed using the “Love, Your Mind” Adobe Express Kit for a custom Reddit partnership with the campaign.

Elevating mental health conversations

Huntsman Mental Health and the Ad Council continue to expand on the “Love, Your Mind” campaign to reach new audiences, including sharing powerful personal stories to reach rural communities, and bringing together eleven leading sports leagues and organizations to showcase pro athletes’ mental health rituals. Across these diverse activations, the “Love, Your Mind” campaign platform and brand identity is always a constant.

“With the campaign playbook created through Adobe Express, we scale our campaign to better reach audiences with the stories that can inspire them to take care of their mind and well-being,” says Leiter.

Learn more about Adobe Express here. Request the “Love, Your Mind” campaign toolkit by emailing LoveYourMind@AdCouncil.org.