Behavioral Health System Baltimore (BHSB) is Central Maryland’s leading expert and resource in advancing behavioral health and wellness. BHSB guides innovative approaches to prevention, early intervention, treatment, and recovery for people who are dealing with mental health and substance use disorders. Their work helps build healthier individuals, stronger families, and safer communities.

BHSB launched the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Carroll County, and Howard County to service those experiencing a mental health emergency.

BHSB had a significant challenge ahead of them: educate residents of three counties about a new crisis line that they could use. To achieve this, BSHB needed to overcome stigma, mistrust, and other reservations surrounding mental health and government initiatives, and make their messaging culturally relevant to their four municipalities with extremely diverse people and cultures:

• Baltimore City has a large proportion of Black citizens, is urban, and has many people living in poverty.
• Baltimore County is predominantly White and suburban.
• Carroll County is primarily rural, interspersed with farms and small villages.
• Howard County is suburban with diverse ethnic populations.

Magnitude of Change’s team harnessed decades of experience with behavioral change initiatives to formulate and execute a media plan that would help BHSB fortify a critical public resource, educating likely callers on the benefits and capabilities of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline in a welcoming, nurturing tone across multiple touch points.

The campaign utilized ORION, Magnitude of Change’s proprietary programmatic platform crafted specifically for purpose driven organizations who want to create behavioral change in their audiences, to execute the campaign and run multiple campaigns through multiple industry leading DSPs.

Through testing and survey data, key insights were uncovered on how the public received the 988 Crisis Line:

• Audiences tended to favor messages that offered a sense of relief, connection, and optimism for a brighter future, without making unrealistic or exaggerated promises.
• The word “crisis” is off-putting: it suggests something overwhelming, chaotic, and impossible to manage. However, “Emergency” is perceived as something urgent that you can take steps to address.
• “Emotional support” was more positively received than “mental health support.”
• A strong majority of all youth respondents said they somewhat or strongly agreed that the ads made them feel they could call or text CALL 988 for emotional support.

The extraordinary results achieved through Magnitude of Change’s efforts established a gold standard for the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and is now being adopted in multiple states, including Minnesota and Louisiana, following the inaugural Maryland campaign.

• In the first half of the campaign, Behavioral Health System Baltimore’s 988 website recorded over 28,500 sessions and achieved more than 400 clicks to call – a surprisingly high number, considering easy-to-remember 988 number.
• The 2023 Spring Coping Tips sub-campaign garnered more than 27 million impressions, achieved nearly 12,000 completed views of Behavioral Health System Baltimore’s 988 call center videos, and achieved more than 14,000 website visits.
• Visits during summer 2023 to the website climbed by more than 430% over the first half of the initiative and clicks to call jumped by 200%.
• Direct traffic grew by 43.5% from Digital Out-of-Home advertising alone.
• Click-through rates for performance display were four times above the industry standard, exceeding .40% CTR.
• The combined conversion rate of the campaign for clicks to call and tip views rose over the course of the first year to 10.4%, well above benchmarks of 2%-5%.