CALM Brings Back Missed Birthdays to Fight Youth Suicide in 2025
Missed Birthdays II is a 2025 documentary-style public service campaign by Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), created by adam&eveDDB and directed by Sebastian Edwards through Academy Films, that tells the true story of Evelyn, a young girl who died by suicide at the age of 15, to drive UK parents and trusted adults to CALM's C.A.R.E. Kit of practical prevention resources.
Campaign Against Living Miserably launched Missed Birthdays II in the United Kingdom on 28 January 2025. The campaign marks the second phase of a youth suicide prevention platform that began with an installation at Westfield London in 2024, extending CALM's work with adam&eveDDB into a full omnichannel broadcast moment. Funding came from the Iceland Foods Charitable Foundation, with ITV serving as media partner and the7stars managing all media planning and buying across cinema, television, video-on-demand and social channels. The campaign ran for four weeks.
The film introduces Evelyn through her family's home videos — birthdays, Christmases, laughter, dancing, and quiet moments shared with younger siblings. Her mother narrates in the form of a letter, recalling a beaming smile, a kind heart and extraordinary hugs. In the final frame, Evelyn holds balloons at her 15th birthday. White text on a black background then reveals she never celebrated her 16th. She is, the film states, one of 6,929 young people who have taken their own life in the United Kingdom in the last decade. That number transforms a private family grief into a national public health argument. All creative and media activity directs audiences toward the CALM C.A.R.E. Kit, an online resource suite designed to equip parents and trusted adults with tools to recognise warning signs and act in moments of crisis. PR for the campaign was handled by Hope & Glory. The Clapboard Score for Missed Birthdays II is 79 out of 100.
Campaign Against Living Miserably grounds Missed Birthdays II in a precise strategic insight: awareness of youth suicide as a social issue does not automatically produce behaviour change in the adults best positioned to intervene. The campaign's architecture responds to that gap directly. Rather than issuing a call to action in the abstract, the film makes emotional contact first — using real home footage and a mother's narration to place the viewer inside a loss that feels achingly ordinary — then routes that emotion toward a concrete resource, the C.A.R.E. Kit, rather than leaving it unresolved.
The United Kingdom's mental health landscape gives this strategic choice urgent context. According to the Samaritans, suicide remains the leading cause of death for people aged 20 to 34 in the United Kingdom, and rates among younger age groups have drawn sustained public health attention. Mind, the UK mental health charity, notes that many young people in crisis do not seek help from professional services first, making trusted adults in their immediate environment a critical first line of support. CALM's decision to address those adults directly — rather than young people in distress themselves — reflects a considered reading of where intervention is most actionable.
The campaign operates in a competitive landscape for public attention. Charities including Samaritans and Mind both run significant awareness campaigns in the United Kingdom, each with established broadcast and digital presences. Where those organisations often emphasise helpline access, CALM's Missed Birthdays II differentiates through its emphasis on adult-led prevention and the specificity of Evelyn's story. The partnership with ITV adds reach that smaller charity media buys rarely achieve, placing the film inside premium broadcast environments alongside the platform's existing mental health programming commitments. According to Thinkbox, television remains the highest-reach advertising medium in the United Kingdom, giving the campaign structural advantages in building the emotional salience that motivates parents to seek out resources.
Sebastian Edwards directed Missed Birthdays II through Academy Films. Edwards brought to the project a documentary sensibility rooted in restraint — the film does not dramatise or reconstruct Evelyn's life but assembles it from what already existed: home videos, family celebrations, the unguarded footage that families make for themselves rather than for audiences. That material carries an authenticity no scripted performance could replicate, and the creative decision to let it speak without embellishment is the film's most significant craft choice.
The creative team at adam&eveDDB comprised Richard Brim as Chief Creative Officer, Ant Nelson and Mike Sutherland as Executive Creative Directors, and Forrest Clancy and Jay Parekh as creatives, as documented by shots magazine and confirmed across multiple industry sources including Ads of the World and Campaign Live. The narration — Evelyn's mother speaking directly to her daughter in the form of a birthday letter — was written to sit lightly over the footage rather than interpret it. The mother's voice does the emotional work that a conventional voiceover script would overstate.
Design agency King Henry contributed to the campaign's visual identity beyond the film itself. The omnichannel execution, planned by the7stars, adapted the film across cinema, television, video-on-demand and social formats without diluting its central register. Cinema placement in particular allows the film to be experienced without the interruption patterns of broadcast or social scroll, making the tonal shift in the final frames — the black screen, the white text, the statistic — land with maximum force. The campaign's restraint extends to its call to action: the C.A.R.E. Kit is presented as a practical next step rather than a fundraising appeal, which preserves the film's emotional credibility through to its final moment. The partnership with ITV, as documented by Campaign Live, gave the film broadcast environments that matched its ambition in scale and audience quality.
No verified independent performance metrics for Missed Birthdays II — such as reach figures, C.A.R.E. Kit uptake data, or conversion rates — are publicly available at the time of writing. What the campaign's structure does make assessable is its design for effectiveness.
The film's use of verified real-world material — genuine home footage, a named individual, a mother's unscripted testimony — eliminates a category of scepticism that plagues fictional public service advertising. Audiences cannot dismiss Evelyn's story as a constructed worst case. The statistic that she is one of 6,929 young people who have died by suicide in the United Kingdom over the last decade lands differently when it follows a face and a name audiences have just spent several minutes with. That sequencing is deliberate and consistent with established principles of narrative persuasion in public health communication.
The omnichannel distribution strategy, managed by the7stars across cinema, television, video-on-demand and social channels for four weeks, maximised frequency of exposure across the demographics most likely to be parents of adolescents. ITV's involvement as a media partner, noted by Campaign Live as part of the campaign's rollout, extended reach into linear television audiences that streaming-only buys would not have captured. The campaign has been cited by Campaign magazine as one of five television advertisements that set the bar for creative standards in 2025, according to Campaign Live — a form of industry recognition that functions as a proxy quality signal in the absence of consumer-facing data. adam&eveDDB's seven-year documented relationship with CALM, which previously produced Project 84 — an installation credited by Creative Salon with contributing to the appointment of the United Kingdom's first minister for suicide prevention — provides further institutional context for the seriousness with which this campaign was resourced and executed.
Missed Birthdays II is a 2025 public service campaign by Campaign Against Living Miserably. Created by adam&eveDDB and directed by Sebastian Edwards, it tells the true story of Evelyn, who died by suicide at 15, to direct UK parents to CALM's C.A.R.E. Kit. The campaign launched on 28 January 2025 and ran for four weeks.
Sebastian Edwards directed Missed Birthdays II through Academy Films. Edwards assembled the film from Evelyn's real home videos, narrated by her mother, avoiding dramatisation or reconstruction entirely. The creative team at adam&eveDDB included Richard Brim as Chief Creative Officer and Executive Creative Directors Ant Nelson and Mike Sutherland.
CALM's C.A.R.E. Kit is an online resource suite designed to help parents and trusted adults recognise warning signs and support young people in crisis. Missed Birthdays II directs all viewers to the Kit at the close of the film, converting the emotional impact of Evelyn's story into a concrete, practical step adults can take immediately.
The campaign ran across cinema, television, video-on-demand and social channels for four weeks from 28 January 2025. Media planning and buying was managed by the7stars, with ITV as a broadcast partner. PR was handled by Hope & Glory. The omnichannel approach was funded by the Iceland Foods Charitable Foundation.
Project 84 was a 2018 installation by CALM and adam&eveDDB featuring 84 sculptures on the ITV Tower to highlight male suicide. According to creative.salon, it contributed to the appointment of the UK's first minister for suicide prevention. Missed Birthdays II continues that seven-year creative relationship, shifting focus to youth suicide and adult-led prevention.
The film states that Evelyn is one of 6,929 young people who have taken their own life in the United Kingdom in the last decade. This figure appears as white text on a black screen at the film's close, immediately following the revelation that Evelyn never reached her 16th birthday, anchoring her individual story in national public health scale.
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