MOOD tea is finally here – industry collaboration to fight youth suicide launches
MOOD, a purpose-driven tea brand created by the Australian media, marketing and creative industry, has launched today to help fight youth suicide.
Each year, suicide is the leading cause of death amongst people aged 15-44[1] in Australia and almost half of all Australians will experience mental ill-health in their lifetime[2]. In order to tackle this growing issue, UnLtd has brought the industry together to create its first social enterprise product to raise funds for youth mental health programs.
The product has been created pro-bono by several well-known companies across the industry including brand and design by Maud and The Monkeys, media by OMD and Mindbox, PR by One Green Bean, social by We Are Social, UX by FJORD, web development by Elephants Can Dance, ad serving by Amazon Advertising and media support by Facebook, Nine, Pedestrian TV, Seven West Media, 10ViacomCBS, News Corp, The Guardian and Verizon Media. Other corporate partners include Google, Venture Consulting, Allen & Overy and Storage King.
Says Chris Freel, CEO, UnLtd: “As an industry we have the opportunity to come together and tackle a massive issue. Youth suicide is the biggest killer of young Australians and that is not OK. Our mission is to ensure that every young Australian gets the best opportunity in life and we want to reverse these alarming statistics. MOOD tea is a great vehicle for us to harness the collective power of our industry and make a monumental social change. With the help of our partners we have created a beautiful product that tastes good, looks good and does good. Now we need to tell everybody about it and that is what we as an industry are so amazing at doing. Imagine if we can look back in a year from now and say that our industry helped keep thousands more young people alive. The more people and organisations that get involved, the more lives that we can help to save.”
The tea range includes four carefully crafted premium blends with the highest quality ingredients, all designed to have a positive impact on the drinker’s mood. Not only does MOOD tea lift people up with their mood positive ingredients, it also lifts up someone else’s mood, giving a young person the opportunity to receive the help and care they need for their mental health.
The profits from MOOD tea will go towards funding mental health programs run by UnLtd’s charity partners including batyr, BackTrack and Gotcha4Life.
Says Jenni Hayward, general manager of MOOD: “Youth suicide is one of the monumental issues of our time. It takes more young lives each year than cancer or car accidents. We couldn’t accept that. So together with our amazing industry partners, we created MOOD to literally lift the mood of a generation. We want to make it easy for people to save young lives while taking an important moment for themselves each day. By choosing MOOD, consumers can sip selflessly knowing that all profits fund youth mental health programs.”
MOOD is now available for purchase at https://mood.org.au/ with a subscription model also available. To find out more about the MOOD story, discuss collaboration opportunities or stock MOOD in your workplace, please contact elena@mood.org.au.
[1] https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/australias-health/suicide-and-intentional-self-harm (2016-2018)
6 Comments
The Mentally Healthy report told us we work in an industry where more than half of its people struggle with their mental health. It seems to me either we’re an industry that somehow attracts the mentally unhealthy or (and this is where my money’s on) it’s an industry that is actively causing these problems.
They even did a survey for 2020. Results clearly showed that what people are crying out for is–
MORE: empathetic, educated leaders; leadership who lead by example; appropriate structure & resources; flexible working conditions, clear objectives.
LESS: motivational posters, yoga classes, free healthy food & snacks, mindfulness initiatives at work, mental health first aid officers.
We had a chance to reevaluate everything about this industry over the last year or so. Instead, what we came up with is mood-boosting tea.
And UnLtd should know better. They helped fund the report.
(https://www.mentally-healthy.org/resources-collection/mentally-healthy-2020)
@karmarama I couldn’t agree with you more. As an ex-advertising person and an active advocate for youth mental health for several years the ad & media industry can do so much better than this. Having a Mentally Healthy report stating some sad stats and then not really putting into practice is also disappointing. This social enterprise in my opinion falls way short. Why not put the creative talent and money into a national awareness campaign?? Hearing from young people with lived experiences of depression and anxiety (often leading to youth suicide) so there is a much deeper and emotional awareness & connection for all rather than drinking tea!
Here’s a challenge for UnLtd WA … think outside the box and really make an impactful difference.
The optimist in me hopes the companies that contributed pro-bono, resourced appropriately and gave the individuals doing the actual work the company time and support to bring this product to life. The pessimist in me worries that the burden was placed on the individuals and the companies did next to nothing. There’s something bleakly ironic about creating a lovely product for a desperately important cause, paired with an industry that is notorious for damaging employee mental health by overloading staff and failing to adequately resource when pro-bono “opportunities” like this come up. I hope I’m wrong, I also hope that some of the mental health programs that are funded are ones that take a good hard look at the culture within our own industry. I also celebrate the fact that individuals have contributed to this project and created something that will raise money and attention, I wish their names were listed rather than just the names of the companies they work for. It is possible to both support this initiative while also pointing out these issues, so good on you UnLtd and the nameless heroes behind the work.
I don’t think this is intended to be a catch all solution – it is only Tea after all.
I’d think it was probably about promotion and raising funds for the actual solution no?
cute! i’m sure all involved are feeling great about themselves.
sadly this feels like a drop in the ocean
@karmarama: systemic problems require systemic change. not tea.
You’re missing the point. This is to raise money and awareness of youth suicide, not an inward looking industry salve.
My understanding is that UnLtd facilitate projects, pairing non profits with creative businesses who can execute them.
Yes, our industry has a lot of work to do. But it’s everyone’s responsibility, as agencies, individuals, clients and, yes, Campaign Brief commentators, to push for change. Instead of composing about what’s not being done here (and who knows, maybe UnLtd is looking to do more for our industry), how will you contribute to making things better?