The campaign ‘Hi Vis Stress Vest’ by Fight or Flight for St John Ambulance won Gold in B2B For Good, Gold in B2B Most Creative PR, at The Drum Awards. It aimed to raise awareness of mental health training in the workplace, particularly in construction, where the ‘tough guy’ attitude hides deep-seated mental health issues. The campaign used hi-vis vests with powerful messages to make mental health visible and sparked significant media coverage and engagement.
The mental health conversation is crowded in the UK, so when St John Ambulance, England’s leading first aid charity, wanted to raise awareness amongst key decision makers of the importance of mental health training in the workplace, we needed to find a creative way to cut through the noise.
There is one industry in which the mental health conversation struggles to be heard. In construction, the ‘tough guy’ attitude is firmly alive, creating a ticking mental health time bomb. Our alarming research uncovered that nearly a third of construction workers describe their current state as “struggling”, “overwhelmed” or “suicidal”, while 82% said they’ve suffered with a mental health challenge at some point in their career in the trade.
Construction workers are known for hiding their true feelings, so we chose to use the very thing that is most visible on site to tell our story, the hi vis vest. And so, the 'Hi Vis Stress Vest' was born, a much more visible way to change the mental health conversation in construction.
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Launched to coincide with Stress Awareness Month in April 2025, the integrated campaign was designed to reach B2B decision makers, but our story struck an emotional chord and ultimately went far beyond the B2B titles those decision makers typically read.
To give credibility to the campaign, we needed to hear from the voices of those working in the construction industry. Through Censuswide, we gathered the insights from 500 UK construction workers. The results – though sadly not surprising – were no less alarming. On top of the fact that 8 in 10 admitted they had suffered from a mental health struggle in their career, we uncovered a reluctance from their colleagues to do anything about it, with 7 in 10 builders saying it was ‘too difficult’ to talk to a depressed colleague.
The research gave us the fuel for the media angles but more importantly provided the industry-specific and often personal insights we needed to create our Hi Vis Stress Vests.
The limited-edition vest designs were inspired by the most cited triggers for mental health raised in the research – from financial worries and ill-health through to grief and peer pressure. Six statements graced the back of our vests, powerful messages once hidden now highly visible – for example, ‘I’m too tired for this tough guy act’, ‘No one will miss me when I am gone’, ‘My debt keeps me awake at night’. The Hi Vis Stress Vests turned PPE into a POV and formed the core of the campaign.
To ensure we could talk credibly to - and on behalf of – the broad construction audience, we worked with three hero talent all with a different perspective on the issue. TV builder Tommy Walsh, construction company MD, Daniel Ashville Louisy, and social influencer, Ben Wade, came together to discuss the issue of mental health and their own personal experiences in a 90 second piece of hero content.
We distributed the content on brand owned social and digital channels, as well as sharing with media and influencers. We reached nearly 400,000 people with the video, many of whom were in our key buying audience.
Just ahead of Stress Awareness Month, an integrated team of Fight or Flight and St John Ambulance took the story far and wide. At FoF, we focused on the tricky verticals of construction, HR, health & safety and engineering, with a media package that included research insights, commentary from our spokespeople, case studies, as well thought leadership.
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We landed 400 pieces, including tier one media such as the Daily Mail and The Independent, key vertical press like Construction News, HR Director and Health & Safety International, as well as delivering two in-depth pieces of thought leadership, a radio slot on Fix Radio (a station specifically for the construction industry) and an appearance on the Thrive in Construction podcast.
With four million opportunities to see (and counting!), the emotive campaign landed our mental health training message exactly where we needed it to. We also engaged key construction influencers who took the campaign to another level, with construction TikTokers, Bricking It, creating their own bespoke content using the Vest that drove over 40,000 likes and triggered nearly 700 comments.
More widely, the predominantly B2B campaign hit a consumer chord, and drove over 370 pieces of consumer coverage, with an OTS of 703 million.
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Existing St John Ambulance customers proactively asked to join the campaign and offered to be case studies and content creators. This included construction giant BAM who chose to incorporate the Hi Vis Stress Vests into a well-being session, that not only supported employee wellbeing but also helped strengthen St John’s relationship with its customer.
BAM became an authentic case study for us, effectively engaging our target audience and demonstrating real-world impact.
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Fight or Flight
Today, B2B brands battle for attention in the same crowded space as everything else. Fight or Flight is a creative communications agency that enables B2B brands...