A meeting of minds

In June 2018 at Engage, our CEO Jon Mew announced the IAB’s partnership with mental health charity, Mind in front of an audience of 1000 people. The partnership had two very clear objectives: 

1. Help Mind with their digital communications strategy

2. Raise awareness of all of the wonderful work that Mind do within our industry

On 21 September, with the ambition of achieving the first objective, IAB UK brought over 60 of the brightest minds from all corners of the online advertising world together to help solve some of Mind’s biggest business challenges. The day culminated in a big pitch by each of the teams, ending up with nine fantastic ideas. Following this exhausting but exhilarating day the IAB worked with Mind to whittle the list down to just three. These three teams were given a month to develop and refine their ideas before putting them to a public vote at the first ever Nonference in November. If the pitch process sounds complicated the winning idea was quite the opposite, with simplicity at its core: Team Zoella’s ‘Uber Mind’.

The idea: request an Uber with a driver that’s been trained in the art of listening. Much like you can ‘hail’ an Uber XL when you need more than four seats, an Uber Mind will be there if you’re in need of someone to talk to.’ You can see the pitch video for yourself here.

What really stood out in team Zoella’s pitch was that they’d taken the initiative to speak to Uber about the idea. Having previously done a similar project with Barnardo’s for child protection, the response was positive.

In December, myself, team Zoella and Mind had a working session at Twitter’s office to iron out some of the key details, barriers and enablers for both passengers and riders to get involved. The team at Mind are now working with their new business team to get it signed off and are looking forward to fleshing the idea out before they bring it to Uber. 

We couldn’t be more excited about working with Team Zoella and Mind to make this idea happen and help men to open up about the way they are feeling. 

2019 will be a big year for our partnership with Mind as we’ll be working closely with them on more wonderful initiatives to help solve some of our industry’s mental health challenges. Watch this space!