Let's Talk

Bell's Let's Talk campaign is over.  This is a thing Bell does ostensibly to try to raise awareness and tolerance of mental health struggles, but which obviously is just an attempt to raise profits by improving public perception of their brand.

I have conflicting thoughts on this issue.

I do like the ads that Bell runs with people talking about their struggles with mental illness.  The stories may be fabricated, but they represent real sorts of problems and have an authentic feel.  Corporations trying to send a message of understanding and acceptance of mental health problems is good, I suppose, but the end goal isn't helping people, it is money.

So they end up spending tons of money not doing the thing they say they are doing, but just trying to find ways to impress people and get their brand out there.  They made lots of Bell Let's Talk hats, which is good for Bell, and rubbish for actually helping people.

It makes me think that we obviously can't rely on corporations to do good things.  They display traits and priorities that would be considered psychopathic in a human, but are simply accepted as the default state of a corporate entity.  My response to seeing splashy, expensive ad campaigns is that if companies have enough money to waste it buying enormous billboards and television spots then they need to be taxed more so that all that extra cash can be spent on useful things instead.  The existence of advertising is, to me, a confirmation that our model of economics and our assumptions about people's ability to make good decisions for themselves are deeply flawed.

This is especially telling when you read articles like this about the wretched ways that Bell treats its employees, disregarding mental health struggles, and in fact even creating them.  Shouldn't come as the least bit surprising though.  Bell, like all companies, exists to make profit.  Employee suffering doesn't change profit margins, so it is ignored.  If profits can be improved by punishing employees, then punish them, or so goes the corporate manifesto.

Talking about mental health is good.  Normalizing mental health struggles is positive.  Having a corporation do this, and do it to try to more money out of customers while not actually doing anything internally to promote good mental health, is a sad sign of the problems we all collectively face.