75% of suicides in the UK are male and suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45. It’s a huge issue that CALM – Campaign Against Living Miserably – is committed to addressing. Problem: Despite growing awareness and understanding of mental health in recent years, in some corners, there remains a perception that illnesses like depression are a sign of weakness and something to be tackled alone. Insight: Heavyweight World Champion, Tyson Fury, had started speaking publicly about his struggles with depression and suicidal thoughts. Something elite-level athletes had previously never been prepared to do.

This gave us a unique opportunity to reach an audience that historically had been incredibly reluctant to engage with our messaging. We could now use Tyson’s experience to start a conversation with the most vulnerable group – men who subscribe to more traditional male archetypes.

If this rich, successful and seemingly healthy superstar could feel lonely, depressed or suicidal, anyone could.

One of the things that makes mental health so challenging is that it’s invisible. The idea was to position mental health as ‘The Invisible Opponent’, which would be achieved by removing Deontay Wilder (Fury’s opponent) from the footage of his recent fight. We used an insightful, memorable truth that made sense of what people were seeing: “Sometimes the toughest opponents are the ones you can’t see.” By shining a light on Tyson’s story, we hoped to challenge the misconception that suffering from and talking about mental health is a sign of weakness.