HOW ARE YOU? OUT OF 10?
This is the calling card of the amazing Talk Club. It’s how they open & close every meeting, and it has become the brand asset with the most distinctiveness.
Talk Club is a male mental fitness movement that exists to prevent poor mental health and ultimately stop suicide in men, by creating a community around safe places to talk and listen.
Talk Club as a brand is in very good shape, with a lot of great work done already. But they reached out to Halo early in 2023 with a need for our strategic and digital expertise. We have been following Talk Club since it was founded here in Bristol, and were only too happy to get involved with the next stage of growth for the brand.
Pro-bono work
Every year, Halo selects a charity to support for free. This year this was it.
Our work with Talk Club started with a conversation with the founders. In this conversation we dug into what they felt they needed to help them move the brand forward. What was it that was missing? We knew that they were very good at getting press coverage, as well as celebrity supporters – with Tyson Fury & Liam Gallagher two big name backers. But there were gaps in what they were managing to achieve – namely:
- Turning visits to the website home page into requests for more info on the charity
- Reaching a new audience of large business with their offering of in-business support
We identified two ways we could help with these gaps, and got down to work.
Website redesign
Website redesign consisted of reviewing the website they currently had (UX audit) and having in-depth discussions about what currently works and what the new site needed to do. Providing wireframes for the build, we then got to work on create a look and feel that fit the brand.
The grungy lines and texture all came from Talk Club’s traditional form of promotion – folded paper zines. Talk Club has DIY at its core, and we wanted to utilise that character by introducing more texture and authentic sources of graphic generation.
All the textures were physically produced by folding paper in the same format as Talk Club’s zines. The idea of the fold became a clear visual metaphor for the community.
Talk Club’s main goal was to produce a digital presence that felt professional but didn’t lose sight of their realistic and grounded beginnings. We were able to build a plugin which contained the new block structures, enabling the site to sit on their existing WordPress site but to bring a new energy to the brand by representing what they are all about.
B2B presentation
We also worked with the Talk Club team to create a presentation with which they can approach large businesses with their offering. Although their B2C offering is focused on group discussions, it was decided that this might not be the most appropriate vehicle for men to open up inside the work setting. We worked on a presentation that introduced the various one-on-one and bespoke offerings Talk Club had developed, as well as building a narrative that took the recipient through the reasons why they might invest in this.
Our narrative presented the shocking statistics of what is lost to men’s poor mental health – from working days to sadly many lives. Building to why we have approached this particular business (we targeted businesses that are very male dominated) and why it would make sound business sense to invest in Talk Club’s expertise and experience in dealing with this.
HOW WERE WE? OUT OF 10?
The website and B2B presentation are performing well – doing the job they were intended to do. We’re very pleased that we could bring some of our expertise to bear on an issue that isn’t spoken of enough – men’s mental fitness.
Here’s to the future of Talk Club. We hope our input has had an impact.
