Mental illness, and the stigma surrounding it, is a critical issue in South Africa.

Against the backdrop of the Covid-19 pandemic, South Africa saw a sharp rise in mental health challenges, increasing from one in five people to one in three people experiencing a mental health issue.

South Africa also received the lowest mental health scores in the world in the second Annual Mental State of the World Report, while depression and anxiety cost the country’s economy more than R200 billion a year.

Investec Life, a private client life insurer launched in 2016, had already positioned itself as a challenger brand in the premium insurance segment.

By partnering with SADAG, Investec Life had the opportunity to use both brands’ convening power to bring mental health into South Africa’s news agenda.

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Mental health has historically been a difficult issue for life insurers.

Clients with mental health risks are often declined cover or face premium loadings that make life insurance prohibitively expensive.

The challenge was to help shift how South Africans, employers, and insurers think and talk about mental health. As long as stigma remained unchallenged, meaningful change would remain out of reach.

The campaign needed to:

• Build credibility for Investec Life as a challenger brand.
• Position Investec Life as a thought leader in the mental health conversation.
• Support the symposium through media coverage and sustained public discussion.
• Educate the market on mental health, underwriting, and insurance risk.
• Highlight SADAG’s work in patient advocacy, education, support, and destigmatisation.
• Create a groundswell of conversation across traditional and social media.

We launched the first annual Reimagine Mental Health Symposium.

A platform designed to encourage open conversations about mental health and the role of insurers, employers, and society in reducing stigma.The symposium brought together specialist voices from the medical, insurance, and mental health advocacy fields, including SADAG representatives, Investec Life leaders, psychiatrists, underwriters, and workplace wellness experts.

SADAG brought credibility as one of South Africa’s leading mental health advocacy organisations, with a national counselling-and-referral call centre, more than 200 support groups, and a footprint across urban, peri-urban, and rural communities.

To help ignite public and media interest, Grammy Award-winning DJ and producer Black Coffee was brought in as keynote speaker. His openness about self-doubt, impostor syndrome, therapy, public pressure, and men’s mental health helped make the conversation more human, relatable, and culturally relevant.

The campaign used the symposium to challenge outdated perceptions of mental health as a risk, and instead reframe it as something that can be managed, supported, and treated.