In the wake of the misery COVID-19 has visited upon the advertising industry, creative agency Cactus has applied its knowledge of the mental health and wellness space to release YOU at Agency. Designed in partnership with the agency’s behavioral health technology sister company, Grit Digital Health, YOU at Agency is a portal for mental wellness tools and resources; information designed specifically to help those most adversely affected by the economic downturn; and content curated for the agency employees. Cactus and Grit Digital Health are offering YOU at Agency with free licensing and at-cost customization/set up for agencies looking to help their employees cope with the COVID-19 crisis.
“We wanted to release a version of our YOU platform for the ad industry that combines proven mental wellness tools with timely and relevant content written and curated by agency people, for agency people,” says Jeff Graham, President and CMO of Cactus. “Behavioral health has always been a focus area of Cactus, and we’re honored to apply our knowledge to help the industry we love come out stronger on the other side of this.”
The technology that drives YOU at Agency originated in 2012-13 when Cactus created ManTherapy as a mental health platform targeting working-age men. The success of that initiative led Cactus to apply the technology to launch YOU at College in 2015-16 as a comprehensive and personalized solution for college students, promoting mental health upstream – before a student finds themself in crisis. The YOU at College platform is now white-labeled by 120 colleges nationwide; and in 2019 Cactus and Grit Digital Health partnered with HopeLab to launch Nod, an app designed to combat loneliness and isolation on college campuses and help students build meaningful social connections. “We hope that offering YOU at Agency now can help agencies take better care of their employees, and help employees practice some needed self-care during this unprecedented time,” Graham adds.
