The Challenge

Ruby Wax has spent the better part of a decade sharing her personal struggles with mental illness, and realised that people need a place where they can find acceptance and support to talk about the issues they face.

The Strategy

Borrowing from the Alcoholics Anonymous model, Ruby created the Frazzled Cafe, a regular, facilitated, judgment-free discussion and support group across accessible venues. 

Edelman’s starting point was to create a brand that would convey relevance, openness and understanding and bring to life the promise of normalising conversations around mental health and connecting people over their stories, lives and shared humanity. 

Working with Ruby and her team, we created a brand identity and narrative to launch Frazzled Cafes to the world. We developed a visual identity and branding guidelines and were responsible for everything from photoshoots to logo design to web layout. 

Our PR teams worked with Ruby’s publicist and publisher to synchronise the Frazzled Cafe launch with the launch of Ruby’s paperback, A Mindfulness Guide for the Frazzled.

The Outcome

Frazzled Cafe, an officially registered charity, received corporate funding, enabling it to fully operationalise with partner venues prior to Covid 19. 

Frazzled Cafe meetings continue to provide a place where people who are feeling frazzled can meet to talk and share their stories online. Meetings create a supportive, anonymous and non-judgemental environment – a place where it’s ok to not be ok. Once lockdown was in place, all meetings moved online, offering virtual support and mindfulness meetings typically lasting 45 – 60 minutes. 

At just under 10,000 members, the mailing list for Frazzled Cafe continues to grow daily. Feeling frazzled isn’t going to go away, but normalising the conversation is a start.