A Digital Campaign to Connect Youth and Families with Mental Health Support
Mental health care can be complicated to access. For many families, it’s hard to know where to begin, especially in the early stages, when a young person is struggling but doesn’t yet meet the threshold for emergency or hospital-based care.
1Call1Click.ca was created to fill that gap. It’s a centralized access point for mental health and addiction services for children and youth in Eastern Ontario. With care coordinators guiding each family through the system, it’s a game-changing resource.
But like so many good services, it needed greater visibility. Despite its value, many families, caregivers, and even youth themselves simply didn’t know it existed. Our job was to help change that.
A Campaign Grounded in Empathy and Clarity
CHEO and the Kids Come First Health Team came to us with a clear mandate: increase awareness of 1Call1Click.ca, reduce stigma around seeking help, and drive traffic to the site from across Ottawa and five surrounding regions.
Together, we developed a bilingual, digital-first campaign designed to meet people where they were, emotionally and digitally. We spoke with youth advisors, clinicians, and caregivers to understand how people actually talk about mental health when they’re overwhelmed or unsure. From those conversations came our creative foundation: lead with empathy, keep it simple, and offer one clear next step.
Human-first Creative, Designed for Real Moments
Our messaging avoided jargon or clinical language. Rather than relying on jargon or clinical terms, we focused on the real, everyday feelings that families and youth experience: being worried, trying to cope, feeling low, unsure where to turn.
These themes became our headlines; short, clear, and designed to interrupt scrolling with messages that felt personal. Visually, the campaign balanced calm, approachable design with a sense of momentum and direction. The goal was to make people feel seen and supported. We wanted every ad to communicate: “There’s help. And it’s okay to ask.”
On TikTok and Instagram, fast-paced short videos featured relatable content and emotional clarity. On Meta, we used remarketing to reconnect with parents and professionals who had previously visited the site. Google Search helped us capture high-intent traffic from users actively looking for support; terms like “ADHD,” “crisis,” and “mental health help for teens” performed particularly well.
