Bastion Shine campaign encourages Kiwis to ‘break the ice (cream)’ and reconnect for ‘Tip Top’ mental health
Leading New Zealand creative consultancy Bastion Shine is shining a light on mental health in a social and experiential campaign for New Zealand’s favourite ice cream brand Tip Top in support of Mental Health Awareness Week (26 Sept-2 Oct).
A Mental Health Foundation of New Zealand partner, Tip Top is motivating Kiwis to ‘get to what’s inside’ and reconnect with each other, because the small kōrero can make a big difference to wellbeing.
The campaign sees a series of positive messages delivered across social via Bastion Amplify and outdoor channels with a playful wink to some of Tip Top’s favourite ice creams.
The messages – including ‘Break the ice’, ‘It’s good to be soft’ and ‘Life’s full of Rocky Roads’ so ‘Reconnect this Mental Health Awareness Week’ – are designed to help normalise reconnecting with the people and places that lift us up in order to build meaningful connections.
To help people open up in person, Bastion Shine has also created a Tip Top pop-up, inviting Kiwis to ‘Share a free ice cream and share what’s on your mind’ over a kōrero with a friend at an activation in Auckland’s Takutai Square Britomart on 30 September.
“Each message reminds people of the importance of connecting with others, having a kōrero and encouraging our loved ones to be themselves – because sometimes we all need a little reminder of how to stay ‘Tip Top’,” says Jo Taylor, Group Business Director at Bastion Shine.
Mental Health Awareness Week runs from 26 September to 2 October.
Agency: Bastion Shine
Bastion Creative NZ
Chief Creative Officer: Richard Maddocks
Creative Director: Dom Antelme
Art Director: Clem de Ruiter
Writer: Phoebe Chetwynd-Talbot
Creative Technologist: Matt Elwood
Head of Design: Danny Carlsen
Design Team: Kuljit Kaur, Dan Sulit, Hannah Christensen, John Pelasio
Content Creator: Dylan Fraser-List
Group Business Director: Jo Taylor
Business Director: Aimee Scopes
Business Manager: Jonny Haydon
Bastion Amplify NZ
General Manager: Jo James
Social Media Manager: Mac Mayerhofler
Client: Tip Top
Head of Marketing: Mel McKenzie
Mental Health Foundation
Senior Fundraising Manager: Alanna Ramsay
Bastion departments involved
[Creative and Design] [Amplify Social & Experience]
20 Comments
Does anyone ever pause and reflect on how deranged and deranging it is that we live in a world where an ice cream brand would think to not only insert itself into a conversation with the life and death gravity of mental health, but go a step further and present itself as some sort of solution?
Fisher argued that capitalist realism demands recognising that capitalism can metabolise any critique and sell it back to you. What’s that, you say? Our hollowed-out atomised society of zombie consumers is leading to record rates of mental illness? How terrible! Thankfully the leading purveyors of diabetes-on-a-stick, Tip Top, are here to help us ‘start a conversation.’
Jesus wept.
You’re having the conversation though aren’t you? And how exactly did they present themselves as a solution? They’re in partnership with the Mental Health Foundation and used their products and a few lighthearted lines to draw attention to a donation page. What’s the big deal?
@getagrip oh please don’t be so dimwitted as to compound the unholy mess you have created with the inane ‘you’re having a conversation’. Is that what Pepsi said about the Kendall Jenner fiasco?
What the ghost said.
THIS IS ALMOST COMICAL.
You’re an ice cream, bro
Despite upwards of 20 people writing, reading or working on this brief, the campaign still saw the light of day. Jelly tips talking about mental health. Is this a sick tone deaf prank?
Why stop there? How about ‘Coco Pop your cancer diagnosis‘ or ‘Gator-Aids awareness week’.
Just take the amount you were going to spend on Tip Top & add it to your donation instead.
Just for the record, I’m more of a sorbet than an ice cream sort of gastronome.
Ice cream sits heavily after a large feast, a sorbet sits lighter and allows room for an extra cheeky bottle of something special. Or even a bottle of Cognac. Probably Cognac. Yes, definitely Cognac.
As for Tip Top, well, they’re now owned by a ghastly English venture capital firm. I’ve heard terrible stories. So I find this campaign quite ironic.
See you at Movida.
@ghost wtf
It was the “Life’s full of Rocky Roads” one that got me.
Comments on mental health campaign detrimental to mental health of people who worked on it.
Anyone who is genuinely sensitive to mental health would never have run this campaign.
… If the product placement wasn’t so oversized and cringe. I’m not someone who doesn’t think corporates can make a meaningful contribution on social issues, but this is so clearly just leeching off a social issue to get people to look at a giant picture of your popsicle and boost your unprompted brand awareness one percentage point.
Agree. Gross.
‘Leading creative consultancy’? What work would suggest that? Certainly not this shocker
L campaign
This is where we are now. Some would say that the obsessive strategy of brand purpose has brought us here.
Others might talk about the complete lack of societal / governmental support or investment for mental health matters means we have to accept the bs compromise of partnerships and campaigns like this.
As far as our industry is concerned then my personal view is that this is horrific. But the only solution is to start investing ourselves both financially and politically in mental health solutions and leave tip top to identify a purpose that is a little more on point. Like beach cleaning, sugar reduction, litter removal etc.
Check the reddit comments on this CB story.
https://www.reddit.com/r/newzealand/comments/xpypho/so_tip_top_launched_a_campaign_leveraging_mental/
what an absolute shocker. completely lacking awareness, somewhat ironically.
I think the advertising industry needs an Anema if this is something that’s it’s internally proud of.
Shame for promoting this god-awful tone-deaf campaign, it’s sickening, what’s next? “It’s full of nuts, but don’t go nuts, eat Snickers!”