Given the wealth of data and coordinated multi-channel systems to reach people, the advertising and media industry is uniquely positioned to tackle challenging societal issues. Suicide is one of the leading causes of death globally for young people, and every suicide is marked with 29 more attempts, yet only less than half will seek help before a suicide attempt. By harnessing the power of advertising, we can identify and extend a helping hand to those contemplating suicide who may not have sought help – and tailor to each person.

In this talk, Black Dog Institute and GroupM, discuss how we used advertising to reach people contemplating suicide in Australia, the USA, and Indonesia – with ongoing research projects in India and Germany.

We'll explore our future direction of using search behaviours and social intelligence to develop a real-time monitoring system to detect the potential emergence of suicide clusters in real time.

A multi-national effort is needed to reduce suicide incidents by 30% by 2030, as set by the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals. The Advertising and Media industry is called upon to pledge their support to be part of the solution.