Meerkats and Youth Focus collaborate with young men to address young male suicide

In February this year, Meerkats and Youth Focus ran a co-creation design thinking workshop with 115 guys aged 18 – 21, engaging with young men themselves to find a new way to address the issue of male youth suicide. The boys competed in teams to come up with a communications idea relevant to their generation – the best concept on the night was a social movement / social media campaign called 
Blue Blokes.

The next stage in the process was to bring Blue Blokes to life. Meerkats collaborated with the same young men in a unique ‘Pro-Am’ format, giving the guys access to industry professionals to improve and sense-check their ideas over a two-day workshop. As well as Meerkats’ digital teams, social media Pros from Voyager Estate, Hatchd, Gramercy Park Consulting and Bam Creative were invited.

The culmination of the workshop was a ‘marketplace’ last Friday morning. Three teams pitched their ideas to a roaming audience of industry pros, client guests, Meerkats staff and other young men. A secret ballot was conducted to determine the winning concept with the result being a unique, credible, highly-relevant social campaign aiming to help young men save each others’ lives.

The Lighthouse Movement (pictured above) emerged as the winner, and Meerkats will now work with the team and Youth Focus to bring the campaign to fruition.