Time to Change mental health campaign calls account review

By Maisie McCabe, campaignlive.co.uk, Thursday, 10 May 2012 08:00AM

Time to Change, the mental health awareness campaign run by the charities Mind and Rethink Mental Illness, has kicked off a review of its creative and media planning agency requirements.

Time to Change campaign

Initially, Time to Change will appoint a communications planning agency to work on the initiative until April 2015. Once a planning agency is in place, it will hold a pitch to appoint a creative agency.

The search follows the award of £20 million of new funding for Time to Change from the Department of Health and Comic Relief in October last year. Between 2007 and 2011, the initiative was funded by Comic Relief and the Big Lottery Fund.

Due to the change in the way the campaign is funded, the review is being held through the Government Procurement Service and the appointed agencies will work alongside the Government’s media buying shop M4C.

Time to Change currently works with Dare on its creative work, which encourages people to talk about mental illness. Before its new funding agreement, the campaign’s media was handled by Hypernaked and the7stars.

A spokeswoman for the campaign said: "To keep a high-profile national campaign like this fresh and effective, it’s important to evaluate agencies over a period of time. Time to Change has successfully worked with their agencies over the last four years to provide campaigns reaching over 47 million people."

This article was first published on campaignlive.co.uk