Tackling a mature category plagued with stigma of depression. Despite the attention that has been given to depression over the past 20 years, many people living with depression are too ashamed to share their feelings publicly due to the stigma attached to the condition. But even when shame is not a factor, patients do not really understand their disease. What few know is that depression isn’t just about mood. Depression manifests with many symptoms–symptoms like tiredness and trouble concentrating that make it difficult to be proactive in getting help. Coaxing an isolated audience with humor to open up, on of all places: Facebook We found people with depression often used self-deprecating humor as a means to open up connect to others while being true to how they were really feeling. Humor (a genre avoided by most big pharma companies) was the means to engage people on their turf; using their language, we helped break down the wall of silence and de-stigmatize depression. How humor a means to humanized a dark, silent disease Our creative solution was to humanize and destigmatize depression’s multiple symptoms by pushing against the stereotypical dark/somber communications of the category . We created Lighter Blue, an unbranded social media campaign on Facebook that starred an illustrated character named Blue, who educates depression sufferers through humor and whose own struggle with depression was wholly relatable. Blue is as sad, as isolated and as vulnerable as our audience and struggles just like them to function with daily tasks due to the many symptoms of depression. Out the darkness of isolation into the light The effectiveness of this approach was clear in the avalanche of social engagement totaling to over 850K page followers and 10.7 MM social engagements in total. There is no doubt we had unlocked a pent-up demand for highly engaging, relatable content, and fresh education about depression.