The Invaders, in collaboration with AFK, partnered with the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline to launch a gaming campaign aimed at bringing mental health into the conversation among gamers. Our goal was to break the stigma surrounding mental health and position 988 as a trusted resource within the gaming community.
To kickstart this initiative, 988 sponsored two streams of Alok Kanojia during Mental Health Awareness Month. Besides being a licensed therapist, Alok is also an avid streamer and is better known as Dr. K or the Healthy Gamer. In these streams, Dr. K had an open and honest discussion about mental health with two of America’s top streamers: Ludwig and Mizkif.
Together, they highlighted the importance of seeking support for mental health issues and explained how 988 provides this crucial service. With both streams peaking at around 18,000 concurrent viewers and chats filled with heartfelt reactions, these streams successfully embedded 988 within the gaming community.
To reinforce 988’s presence as the IRL support character for gamers, these streams will be followed by a comprehensive banner campaign. These banners will further communicate 988’s message in a way that is relatable and recognizable to gamers.
Results:
The interview with Mizkif on May 27th shattered records, outperforming the next best-performing stream by an astonishing 114%! This success makes it Dr. K’s top stream ever in terms of VOD views, unique viewers, and live viewers.
Notably, in both streams, the sponsored segment resulted in an increase in viewership and was met with overwhelmingly positive feedback. During the first interview between Dr. K and Ludwig, we also observed a significant spike in tracking link clicks, with 18% of concurrent viewers checking out the 988 website. Similarly, the Mizkif stream demonstrated comparable engagement.
The VODs were uploaded immediately after the livestream interviews with Ludwig and Mizkif concluded, and they continue to generate new views and engagements to this day. Community sentiment on YouTube has been overwhelmingly positive, with viewers praising both the interviews and the sponsorship segments.
These results prove that mental health is a topic of high interest within the community and that the sponsored segment was well-integrated and engaging. This was further confirmed by the 73.75% video completion rate of the ad campaign.
About 988:
The 988 Lifeline is a national network of local crisis centers that provides free and confidential emotional support to people in suicidal crisis or emotional distress 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in the United States.
Client
988
Case
Support
Platform
Twitch
