Bell Let’s Talk and One Marketer’s Non-Marketing Perspective
From the perspective of a marketer who has spent most of her career around communities who experience mental health at exacerbated rates — Bell Let’s Talk Leaves a terrible taste in my mouth.
Right now, I am enrolled in a Brand Management program and one of the case studies we are evaluating is Bell Let’s Talk, mostly around the efficiency of the campaign. Through the single lens of business/marketing, Bell Let’s Talk is wildly successful. Year after year, engagement has increased as well as Bell’s donation to mental health agencies.
Being in a marketing program (and even working in marketing at all) is challenging as someone who believes deeply that capitalism does more harm than good. I am not here to debate that point, this is just the value system than I am engaging in the course material from and the perspective from which this article was written.
To this particular case study, I also come as someone who personally struggles with mental health challenges and has worked closely with communities that experience mental health issues at exacerbated rates.
Without a Home: The National Youth Homelessness survey indicates that 85.4% of homeless youth experienced a mental health crisis. Rainbow Health Ontario and CMHA Ontario reports that LGBTQ+ folks experience “higher rates of depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive and phobic disorders, suicidality, self-harm, and substance use among LGBT people,” and “double the risk for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) than heterosexual people”. Even though youth with involvement in the child welfare system experience Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) at alarming rates, they are often left out of research and discussions about PTSD.
Bell also profits (an undisclosed amount) from an exclusive contract with Ontario’s government to ‘provide’ telephone services in jails, which is wrong for so many reasons some of which are outlined in this article.
I hope it’s clear by now that I am very passionate about broadening the conversation on mental health, and in fact believe some of the messaging coming out of Bell Let’s Talk is decent. They’ve talked about how people miss work due to mental health. Spokesperson Howie Mandel has talked about how weird it is to say you are going to a psychologist appointment, when it should be as normal as saying you are going to the dentist. I am glad this conversation is happening.
But a telecommunications company as a leader in mental health? It’s just weird.
People struggling with mental health challenges are more likely to live in poverty. Which means those living with mental health challenges are actually less likely to have access to technology or be able to afford a phone plan — yet telecommunications remain prohibitively expensive in Canada. We often take this access for granted without realizing that “21 per cent of Canadian households have no internet access,” and it’s closely linked to household income levels. There is also “a clear divide between rural and urban Canada” which disproportionately impacts Indigenous communities who were violently relocated by colonial settlers and continue to be underserved, disenfranchised and ignored by our government.
It’s weird…and it’s downright hypocritical of Bell who doesn’t treat their employees with the same compassion as their Let’s Talk campaign suggests they might.
Many employees have spoken up about the working environment negatively impacting their mental health — most of that is associated with aggressive sales goals (linking us back to capitalism). CBC has investigated these claims and written articles about it.
Aren’t organizations and mental health services providers more equipped to be the leader in this space?
While I am glad they donate proceedings of the campaign, Bell’s business benefits from running this campaign. What kind of difference would they make if their donations went to actual leaders in mental health, so that they could directly benefit from the brand recognition?
We hold non-profit organizations to different standards than for profits. Dan Pallotta summarized beautifully in his TedTalk The way we think about charity is dead wrong in 2013. Here is a direct quote from the piece that I feel summarizes it quite well as he discusses compensation discrimination towards the non-profit sector.
“So in the for-profit sector, the more value you produce, the more money you can make. But we don’t like nonprofits to use money to incentivize people to produce more in social service. We have a visceral reaction to the idea that anyone would make very much money helping other people. Interestingly, we don’t have a visceral reaction to the notion that people would make a lot of money not helping other people.”
For this reason, we want non-profits to change the world, but we don’t want our charitable dollars going to marketing or fundraising activities…does this attitude really make sense?
We prop up initiatives like Bell Let’s Talk and celebrate them, without considering that this is just another way for Bell to gain brand favour and ultimately benefit financially while they simultaneously perpetuate systemic barriers faced, by the very people they claim to support with their campaign.
If Bell as a business was not benefitting — do you think they would continue running the campaign year after year?
Bell Let’s Talk still packages mental health in a way that it’s palatable to the mainstream.
When in reality mental health is diverse and it’s messy. Bell has tapped into something special in that many Canadian truly do want to make a positive difference, and this campaign gives them the opportunity to do that, but it also steals something from us. I believe it takes from us the holistic view on mental health that we need to move forward with in order to continue truly making a difference because the message still centers around a multi-billion-dollar company.
It’s hard to understand complexity, we want simple and neatly packaged messaging as humans. It’s easier for our brains to process. That’s what Bell Let’s Talk give us, and in doing that, it numbs us to the complexity.
This is NOT a cancel culture post.
What I don’t want to mislead is the idea that I am calling for an end to the Bell Let’s Talk campaign. If it’s engaged you in a new way of thinking about mental health, that’s great. If it’s something you’ve become passionate about because of the campaign, keep going, keep learning. For my clients, I always give the option to engage with the campaign in a way that is meaningful and makes sense to them.
What I do want is to expand and deepen the conversation. To be a marketer and someone who cares deeply about people. For those two things not to feel so at war with each other all the time.
This is a call to embrace complexity. Because it is in complexity where I believe true change, compassion, and empathy flourishes.
