“Evelyn” is the true story that unfolds through home videos narrated as an emotional letter from a mother to her beloved daughter ahead of her sixteenth birthday. It’s a birthday she doesn’t reach.
Television has long been a powerful and important platform for CALM (the pk10 Against Living Miserably) though the suicide prevention charity does not spend on above-the-line media, says CALM chief executive officer Simon Gunning.
“Instead, we rely on our long-standing partnerships with media owners and with the7stars,” he explains. “We’ve had incredible support from Sky, Channel 4 and UKTV in the past but most notable is our long-standing partnership with ITV.”
Not only has ITV gifted CALM valuable commercial airtime, it also has an editorial relationship with CALM, particularly its daytime flagship programme This Morning.
The amount of emotion and information that can be conveyed in a two-minute commercial via TV is unmatched, Adam & Eve/DDB creative Forrest Clancy points out.
“Additionally, suicide is a problem that lives and grows in the shadows of people’s homes,” he adds. “So, to be able to use a medium that puts the topic right where the battle is happening, felt particularly appropriate.”
The film’s starting point was an alarming change in Office for National Statistics data which revealed young people aged between 16 and 30 have in recent years become the group most at risk of suicide in the UK.
“We know that suicidality is a cohort behaviour that, when it arises in youth, stays with groups throughout their lives,” Gunning says.
“We wanted to change this behaviour while our target audience is still young by empowering ‘trusted adults’ to get past stigma and actively support the young people in their lives.”
The film’s call to action is to direct viewers to CALM C.A.R.E. Kit, a resource to enable parents and trusted adults to play an active role in ending youth suicide.
Part of CALM’s “Missed birthdays” campaign, the creative idea was to tell the true story of a life cut short by youth suicide through home videos and firsthand accounts. Getting the right director on board early was essential.
“We needed a director who was sensitive enough to be able to work with families who have lost children, while also creating an emotionally engaging film from existing footage,” Clancy explains.
“When our joint head of integrated production Nikki Cramphorn told us the brilliant Seb Edwards was interested, we couldn’t believe our luck.”
Much time was then spent identifying and assessing potential families.
“Casting alone took an excess of three months with a huge responsibility for CALM and Adam & Eve/DDB to safeguard participants,” Gunning says.
“We engaged with more than 50 families to try to find a case study that would work for the film, which of course meant we needed a huge amount of footage for Seb Edwards to work with.
“The last thing we would ever do is create straight advertising with a crass rug pull.” He adds: “Seb didn’t want to do anything tricky or false as he thought the most emotional film would be the realest one.”
Finding a family where there was both sufficient home video material and a family member able to take on the difficult task of telling the story was a tough ask.
For a while, a multi-person narrative was considered, until they found Evelyn’s story. More time was then spent working closely with her family to create a narrative that brought the viewer along.
“Alongside the birthdays, all these clips brought to life the joyful, hilarious and loving human that Evelyn was,” says Clancy. “But what felt really poignant was that these videos can exist on our own phones, of our own children.”
“So, when the ending does arrive, you can’t help but ask yourself: if it could happen to Evelyn, why couldn’t it happen to my child? That, to us, is what Evelyn’s legacy stands for.”
When it came to the soundtrack, the team worked hard to strike a delicate balance.
“We didn’t want [it] to feel overly sad, because we needed to protect the ending rather than give it away, and to walk the line that separates celebration from remembrance,” Clancy says. They landed on an unreleased song by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis.
For the narration, Edwards visited Evelyn’s parents, Jenni and Jack, in Lincolnshire so he could record Jenni in Evelyn’s bedroom, which hasn’t been touched since her passing.
“Jenni’s narration is the most moving part of the ad. It took tremendous strength for her to do it, and she delivers it perfectly,” Clancy adds. “On the day that we first laid her voice over the footage, we knew we had found the film’s emotional core.”
“Evelyn” premiered live on This Morning in January 2025 before rolling out elsewhere, including YouTube and social media.
Second place in the January/February Thinkboxes goes to "When you've done enough” by Mother for Uber Eats. “Investigation Done Proper” by Lucky Generals for Yorkshire Tea is third.
Also shortlisted were “It's not a little thing. It's everything” by BBH London for Tesco and “Win at Moving with Zoopla” by Lucky Generals for Zoopla.
WINNING AD
Agency: Adam & Eve/DDB Creative team: Richard Brim, chief creative officer; Ant Nelson, executive creative director; Mike Sutherland, executive creative director; Forrest Clancy, creative; Jay Parekh, creative Client: Simon Gunning Production company: Academy Director: Seb Edwards
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