Our award-winning poster campaign in stations around Great Britain.
We put thousands of posters and adverts up in stations across England, Scotland and Wales raising awareness of our 24-hour listening service, which offers emotional support to anyone who needs someone.
We wanted people to know that whatever they're facing, a Samaritan will face it with them. No judgement. No pressure.
Since the campaign was launched in February 2015, it's been seen by tens of millions of people, and there has been a fall in the number of people dying by suicide on the railways.
Each poster shows the back of a person's head and a sentence spoken from that person's point of view. Each sentence feels fairly commonplace — something you can imagine a friend saying.
But hidden in each sentence is another message, for example, "I'm not coping", or "Please help me". The posters show how easy it can be to overlook the words that matter, and fact that someone around us needs help. They also show how difficult asking for help — and saying to another person that you're not okay — can be.
MullenLowe London, the creative agency we worked with on this campaign, won the prestigious 'Wood Pencil' award in the Photography for Advertising category for the 'We Listen' images. And our 'We Listen' images were featured in the Wellcome Collection's exhibition, 'Can Graphic Design Save Your Life?', the first major exhibition to examine the relationship between graphic design and wellbeing.
In February 2016, we launched 360° video to show, through immersive storytelling, how hard it can be to hear the message that a friend is finding it hard to cope. In this video, which has over 150,000 views, a man talks about his everyday life in the way he would talk to a friend. Slowly, he reveals that he is struggling.
We Listen is supported by Network Rail on behalf of the wider rail industry.