In 2023, 17% of Canadian men, aged 15+ said they have poor mental health. What’s worse is that they’re not talking to anyone about it — only 30% of people who use mental health services are men. (Source: Statistics Canada, Government of Canada, 2023)
Outdated notions of masculinity aren’t helping the matter. Social norms dictate that men are barely supposed to express their feelings, never mind opening up about them with a professional, or even just with a friend.
So that’s why when Pringles and Movember — a global charity changing the face of men’s health — partnered for the first time in Canada, we wanted to focus on getting Canadian men (and male-identifying individuals) talking. Our objective was to start small; to make the journey towards men’s mental health bite-sized and approachable: we wanted to get men to pop in on their friends to talk openly about their mental health.
To get men talking, we started by looking at how they speak to each other. We quickly realized that phrases that create barriers are intertwined into our everyday narratives, especially for men. When men are asked how they’re doing, they often men’imize the issue, claiming they’re ‘fine’.
Just… fine.
“I’m fine.”
“Everything’s fine.”
Even when they’re not.
‘I’m fine’ is a line as old as time. But behind every ‘I’m fine’, there’s always fine print.
So we got to work. To announce Pringles’ partnership with Movember, and to help men start meaningful conversations, we created a new flavour of pringles — I’m Fine — only it didn’t have any chips inside. Instead, it had a stack of Pringles-shaped-cards with questions that help men pop in on their bros by popping open a can. The only rule? You’re not allowed to say ‘I’m fine’ at any point.
To get the conversation going, and to model how to break the silence and embrace vulnerability, we sent our I’m Fine cans to influencers and invited them to open up. Our influencers received a custom box with real Pringles to share, and our I’m Fine Pringles to really share.
In a world where vulnerability is often misunderstood, the game served as a catalyst for open dialogue allowing them to share their experiences, challenges, and triumphs — all while using game mechanics to help take the pressure off. Questions were varied and open-ended, like “How do I handle stress and anxiety?”, “What do you think I’m most insecure about?”, and “What’s one life-lesson you’ve learned from me?”
Our influencers went to their channels to let everyone know that Pringles Canada and Movember have teamed up to raise awareness for men’s mental health, then shared footage of themselves and a friend taking turns asking each other questions from the I’m Fine game, letting the conversation flow naturally. They ended by encouraging their audience to pop in on each other — because behind every ‘I’m fine’ is an opportunity to open up.
Next, they got their fans talking. Following their conversation, they went to their stories to engage their audience, asking them questions from the game and resharing some of their favourite answers, sparking dialogue once again.
In addition to making a $125k donation to Movember in support of men’s health, Pringles used a pretty simple — but effective — mechanic to show men that taking a step towards being fine can be as easy as not hiding behind ‘I’m fine’.
The reaction we got was more than fine.
Our campaign generated 13.3M total impressions — surpassing goals up to 13x across program elements. And our campaign exceeded performance norms for recall and message association by 5x and 8x respectively.
I’m Fine posts topped any of Pringles Canada’s campaigns to date with the highest video completion rates, click-thru rates, view-thru rates, and both in-view time and average watch time metrics compared to previous social campaigns thus far.
We also saw an impressive 24.7 point lift (vs. 4.9 norm) in standard ad recall, effectively drawing a correlation between Pringles Canada and men’s mental health. We also saw a 7.9 point lift in message association — nearly 8x the norm.
And influencer content did just as well.
Influencers drove 2.5x more traffic than expected, with one influencer seeing a CTR of a whopping 2.56% — 43x beyond expected!
Influencer stories drove 2x the expected view rate and kept convos going via question prompts, motivating and engaging Canadians to have deeper, more meaningful conversations. In fact, content exceeded positive sentiment brand norms by 16 percentage points.
The media was talking too — we quadrupled our initial goal, earning 5.3M impressions — 19x industry standard.
And this is all within Pringles Canada and Movember’s first year of partnership, proving that showing up for yourself and each other can be as simple as popping in to pop open a can of Pringles.
