Youthline
National Campaign / Audience Participation / Creative Strategy
STATE OF THE GENERATION
Youthline had valuable insight sitting quietly inside a research report. I saw an opportunity to make listening part of the brand.
Openly, honestly and at scale.
State of the Generation was designed as a national participation platform. A place for young people to share their experiences in their own words, without interpretation or institutional framing shaping the response. This was about positioning Youthline as an organisation that doesn’t just support young people, it really listens to them to shape better support.
Rather than treat State of the Generation as another piece of research - I led the campaign to make it a national invitation for rangatahi to speak for themselves.
no performance.
no polished campaign speak.
just space to speak.
The challenge was to create something that felt safe enough to invite honesty - while simple enough to remove friction from participation.
This is not a survey. This your voice. Speak up.
The participation experience was stripped of the conventions of institutional research. Language became human. Real young people and lived experience became the campaign.
Trust and anonymity were fundamental. Every part of the experience - language, design, access and campaign expression - was built to feel direct, respectful and low-pressure.
Thousands of responses helped shape Youthline’s understanding of the issues young people were facing.
‘This was all about taking their thoughts, fears, hopes and experiences out of the report and making them impossible to ignore.
Their names stayed private. Their voices became the story. The message was simple: what young people think and feel matters to Youthline.
This needed to shift participation from something extracted through research into something built through trust and genuine listening.
Then we turned the launch itself into a statement. I conceived a public reveal of the findings where anonymous words from young people were projected across the walls.
Ultimately, the project needed to strengthen Youthline’s relationship with the people it exists for. The 2026 research reached thousands of young people aged 12–24 across Aotearoa, giving Youthline a richer picture of what really matters to young people and where support needs to evolve.
The result was more than insight. It was a visible act of listening - turning research into participation, participation into understanding, and understanding into action.
Role: Creative Director & Brand Strategist - conceiving and leading the national campaign and launch, defining the participation strategy, creative platform, UX, language and visual expression.
