The good thing about being furloughed is having more time with my family. I love that we are together so much now. Although being a home school teacher to two housebound hooligans (now on summer holidays. Phew.) was…an experience.
The worst thing about being furloughed is that I very quickly began to miss work. I get frustrated and irritable unless I’m constantly busy having ideas and making things. I worried about not being at work which then made me feel guilty about getting paid for not working. I needed a project to fight the furlough fatigue.
Depression is a consuming, always on illness that has only intensified with the impact of lockdown. On my 4th week at home I saw a shocking stat from suicide prevention charity CALM (Campaign Against Living Miserably) who experienced a record surge in demand for their suicide prevention services with a 37% increase during the first week of COVID-19 lockdown alone. We have a history of mental illness in our family. My aunt attempted suicide a couple of years ago and we very recently lost someone this way on my brother’s wife’s side of the family. Suicide is the biggest killer of men under 45 in the UK.
This compelled me to think, what could I do to help raise awareness of this and put my time at home around teaching the kids (which soon regressed to marshalling their Xbox addiction), to some use? My five-year-old gave me an idea. “You need a haircut dad”. I was suddenly aware that the whole nation needed a haircut. In fact, people were so desperate for a haircut that they were already doing it themselves (Google searches for hair clippers was up almost 400% YOY in April 2020) and so, The Big Buzz Off was born.
I challenged myself to write a pitch for CALM, build the campaign and launch it - within a week.
With some stubborn minded determination, a lot of pent up furloughed energy and pro-bono help from my Team Furlough comrades at Propellernet, Dead Good Studio and Zeitgeist, we went for it.
At breakneck speed and with none of the typical client red tape to navigate, we got the charity on board (an amazing team of hugely dedicated, lovely people), worked with the sublimely talented Alex Bamford to produce the creative, harangued Twitter (who were fast to reply and brilliantly generous) to secure a media partnership, got W*A*R*S to create a barbershop mix tape on board their submarine, approached New York band We Are Scientists to support the campaign with the release of their new single I Cut My Own Hair (thanks to our good friends at Zeitgeist), created a DIY music video featuring the band and some of the participating public and recruited CALM ambassador, Love Island winner and barber Kem Centinay to create a buzz cut tips video – with the content hosted on a Big Buzz Off hub page.
Over 600 people took part raising £12,000 to fund 1,500 potentially lifesaving suicide prevention calls. The campaign also generated awareness through high social media engagement and PR coverage including BBC 6 Music, The NME and Metro.
It was great to have been able to do something positive with my time and really fun to collaborate with such a fantastic bunch of people. I am already planning a follow up idea for CALM and hopefully we can raise further funds and awareness for their vital services during what has been an incredibly difficult time for so many.