Here's some free advice to anyone who wants to use mental health for
comedy: don't. At least, don't do it when the service you're offering is
alleging to help people with mental heath issues.
I understand completely what BetterHelp is trying to do. A similar
ad from some years ago used those Nigerian Prince scams as its focus. A
woman is sitting by herself on a bus when an elderly man sits down next to
her to tell her he's going to give her part of his fortune if she cashes a
check for him, all using slightly broken English befitting an email put
through a bad translator. Naturally, the woman shakes her head and gets off
at the next stop. The narrator chimes in, "You wouldn't take this offer in
person, so why would you go along with it in an e-mail chain?"
It's a rather on-the-nose way of saying, "This is how you sound when
talking about X" or "This is how X looks to everyone else." A series of
comedy skits on YouTube take a similar approach:
As of this writing, BetterHelp has 3 ads using this formula. I'll
try to link them where I can, but as far as I can tell,
BetterHelp doesn't have a YouTube channel where they would
keep all of these videos to be used in pre-roll ads. The one with the
weightlifter is actually the most subtle. Two men are working out in a gym.
One struggles with a bench press, unable to lift the bar off his chest. Another man offers a spot. He is blown off at first, to which
he counters, "There's nothing wrong with asking for help." He is dismissed
again with what sounds like a non sequitur, "You don't know my family."
There's no hyperbole or absurdism here, at least not to the extent of the
other ads in this campaign. In fact, if it weren't for the other ads, I'd
call this a very effective public service announcement.
The next ad in the campaign is more comical, though I have to admit it's a
bit of a guilty pleasure. A woman sits on her couch in a living room. The
lights go out, then flicker back on a moment later. The woman's roommate
calls out how long this has been going on. Like with the weightlifter, she
is dismissed. The lights go out again. When they flicker back on a moment
later, the roommate is now standing in the living room door and asking again
about getting the problem fixed. The dismissal this time is much like the
one the weightlifter gave, a call to simply cope with the situation. The ad
is essentially playing off horror movie tropes, of people disappearing and
reappearing with lights going on and off. I hate to admit it got a chuckle
out of me. Much like the weightlifter ad, it's subtle enough to serve as a
public service announcement on how to identify a person going through mental
health problems. That is, the shorter version of the ad is almost effective.
There's a longer version of the ad involving a book case getting toppled
during a blackout.
The third ad goes off the rails completely into slapstick comedy. A cowboy
with a bandaged foot limps along to his horse. Another cowboy offers help,
noting how deadly rattlesnake bites can get. The first cowboy starts giving
some speech about "how his daddy and his daddy before him" did something or
other. There's no message or theme here that isn't buried under the
formulaic comedy trope of walking through pain. When King Arthur's duel with the Black Knight in Monty Python and the Holy Grail is more subtle than you, you have failed in whatever it was you were trying
to convey.
You haven't highlighted the weight of the problem. You've put it on stage
and made a spectacle of it.
Kayak went from making fun of cryptomnesia (unconscious appropriation) to
labeling people who speak out against their business model as "Kayak
Deniers." The political overtones of this should be obvious. The targets
are chiefly climate change deniers, anti-vaxxers, and a few other conspiracy
theories while it's at it. The ads focus on small family gatherings in which
the "issue" of Kayak is brought up, at which point a verbal battle of words
ensues, escalating to a shouting match before someone storms off, leaving
everyone else rolling their eyes at the whole debacle.
So, how can I defend one set of ads while another gets admonished for the
same technique? Simply put, the melody is the same, but the instrumentation
is different. Kayak is a travel planning service using socio-political
tensions as a punchline. BetterHelp is an online/virtual counseling
service using mental health as... well, it's not trying to make it sound
like a punchline, but it definitely feels as though it's mocking it, or at
least minimizing it. It makes me wonder who the ad is for exactly. If it's
someone with mental health problems, it comes across as diminishing,
painting them as a burden when that's precisely why they keep their issues
bottled up in the first place. If it's someone else (i.e. the roommate, the
spotter, etc.), it doesn't offer much insight into the problem, and
certainly doesn't equip them on how to handle the situation.
