Clinical Complexity
One direction
Clarity
pull gently…The brief was not one message for one person. It was a system of needs that had to hold together.
Case study / Thrive Mental Wellbeing
Building trust
and adoption in digital mental healthcare.
A clinically credible service needed a more coherent way to speak to employers, customers and the people seeking support. I helped turn that challenge into a creative system people could use.
Follow the journey
Thrive Mental WellbeingApril 2022 – April 2023Brand · Marketing · Product · Enablement
01 / The problemA good service.
A good service.
A fragmented story.
Thrive had a clinically credible service with a meaningful purpose, but its value was not always communicated consistently across the customer journey.
three audiences. one service.Prospects / Decision makers
Need commercial clarity.
Customer teams / HR
Need a repeatable way to launch and promote.
Users / Potentially unwell
Need safe, relevant and accessible guidance.
Very broad audienceInternally, clinical accuracy, customer requirements and commercial urgency all needed to be reconciled without weakening the brand or slowing delivery.
The opportunity was larger than refreshing individual assets. Thrive needed a clearer creative direction and a practical communication system that could work across audiences.
02 / The directionFour principles.
Four principles.
One point of view.
I established four principles to guide the work.
Human without appearing informal
Mental-health communication needed warmth and emotional intelligence, but it could not appear casual or make unsupported promises. The work used recognisable experiences, direct language and considered imagery to help people see relevance without feeling labelled.
Clinically credible without becoming institutional
The service needed to retain the authority of its clinical foundation while avoiding the coldness and distance common in healthcare communication. Information was structured around the user's situation and next action rather than professional terminology.
Accessible without oversimplifying
Complex and sensitive information was given a clear hierarchy, concise language and an appropriate format. Simplification never came at the expense of accuracy, safeguarding or the meaning of clinical guidance.
Consistent enough to scale
The creative direction had to work beyond the design team. Reusable structures, templates and guidance enabled colleagues across Marketing, Sales, Clinical and Customer Success to deliver stronger communications with greater independence.
03 / The workFrom principle
From principle
to practice.
The direction had to live in the things people used: customer launch tools, employee-facing campaigns, marketing materials, clinical product journeys and the system behind them.
01 / Marketing
Marketing the service.
I helped refine the brand around a clearer core message: mental-health support should feel human, credible and relevant to everyday life. That focus shaped the organic social presence and gave the wider marketing programme a more consistent voice.
Promotional content included A Day in Their Shoes, a short-film series following people through their daily lives, exploring the struggles they encounter and the ways they find greater stability in their mental health. Founder videos added another personal perspective, connecting the purpose of the service with the people building it.
The programme also included regular, hour-long Thrive webinars responding to current market themes with industry experts, alongside a new podcast, It’s Okay to Say. Candid conversations with Thrive clinicians about their experiences of therapy helped make TMW feel more personal and introduced the thoughtful, compassionate people behind the service.
01A Day in Their ShoesShort-film series artwork
03It’s Okay to SayClinician podcast artwork
05Founder filmsBrand-story video artwork
02 / Customer enablement
Help the customer get going.& keep going
One of the largest pieces of work was the Thrive Promotion Guide, a customer enablement platform designed to help organisations launch, promote and embed the service across their workforce.
Previously, customers and internal teams could spend significant time assembling launch communications, adapting assets and deciding what to say at different stages of the rollout. I brought this material into a more structured experience containing launch guidance, campaign ideas, ready-to-use communications, downloadable assets and personalised access information.
The aim was not simply to create another resource library. The experience was organised around what a customer needed to accomplish, helping them move from preparation through launch and continued engagement with less uncertainty and duplicated work.
03Launch toolkitImage space / ready for your work
04Campaign assetsImage space / ready for your work
05Customer journeyImage space / ready for your work
06Thrive CSM AnalyticsImage space / ready for your work
The moment that mattersWhen help
is needed.03
is needed.03
Inside the organisationDeploying Thrive
into the organisation.02
into the organisation.02
Building awarenessMarketing
Thrive.01
Thrive.01
Awareness creates the opening. Deployment makes the service usable. The communication still has to work when a person actually needs support.
03 / Employee campaignsCatch attention.
Catch attention.
Keep the care.
Employee-facing work needed to attract attention without sensationalising mental health or relying on diagnostic language. I developed communications around recognisable moments and practical actions, connecting everyday experiences with relevant support inside the Thrive service.
The approach was applied across digital campaigns, printed materials, customer communications, social content and webinars. It created a more consistent relationship between the brand promise and the help available within the product.
04 / Product and clinicalMake the complex
Make the complex
feel navigable.
I worked with clinical specialists and product stakeholders to communicate areas including CBT, Applied Relaxation, screening journeys, goals, reminders and engagement features.
The challenge was to make each feature understandable at the moment it became relevant without overwhelming the user or weakening the clinical meaning. I used consistent hierarchy, plain language and modular visual patterns so that related tools felt part of one service rather than a collection of disconnected features.
05 / The system behind itNot another asset.
Not another asset.
A way of working.
Alongside campaign and product work, I developed reusable templates, asset libraries and creative standards for teams producing customer and commercial communications.
This improved consistency across channels while reducing reliance on the design function for routine output. It also allowed more time to be focused on briefs where strategic or creative input would make the greatest difference.
The system was informed by stakeholder feedback, website analytics, content performance and recurring customer needs. It continued to evolve as the service, audience and commercial priorities changed.
04 / The impactWhat changed.
What changed.
What I learned.
£1m+
Thrive's marketing function generated more than £1 million in marketing-qualified sales pipeline during the most recent calendar year. My work contributed to that team-level result.
How I led the work
- Challenged and clarified briefs before production began
- Aligned clinical accuracy with commercial and user needs
- Translated competing stakeholder priorities into clear creative decisions
- Presented direction and rationale to senior stakeholders
- Established templates and standards that could be used by other teams
- Provided constructive feedback and coaching across digital content
- Protected quality while delivering a high volume of time-sensitive work
- Used audience insight and performance evidence to guide iteration
Outcomes
- Created a clearer and more consistent expression of Thrive across customer, user and internal touchpoints
- Reduced the need to recreate launch communications for each customer
- Increased the ability of Customer Success, Marketing, Sales and Clinical teams to deliver appropriate communications independently
- Established a common system for campaigns, customer enablement and product communication
- Contributed to a marketing function that generated more than £1 million in marketing-qualified sales pipeline during the most recent calendar year
05 / Reflection
The work reinforced that clarity in healthcare is not simply a matter of reducing the number of words. It requires understanding the action someone needs to take, the confidence they need in order to take it and the risks created by either ambiguity or oversimplification.
The most effective outcome was therefore not a single campaign or visual asset. It was a more coherent system that allowed Thrive to communicate with greater consistency while remaining clinically responsible, commercially useful and recognisably human.