Client: Caba

Raising awareness of rising addiction in the accountancy sector

Our client caba, the occupational charity for ICAEW chartered accountants, wanted to raise awareness about a pretty taboo subject in the sector: physical and behavioural addictions. Not to shame those struggling in the industry, but to let those struggling in silence know that help and support was there if they needed it. 

The insight that informed the campaign

Research conducted by caba towards the end of 2022 found that more than half of accountants were suffering from stress and burnout. Many of them feeling too embarrassed to discuss their mental health concerns because they feared it would impact their career development. We then hypothesised that in suppressing these worries, some may be adopting negative behaviours in order to cope, or escape. 

Revealing the surprising statistics

Caba ran further research early in 2023 amongst 1,919 chartered accountants across the UK to dive deeper into potential addictions, and addictive patterns, that might be happening within accountancy.  

They found that 1 in 5 young accountants say alcohol has negatively impacted their life. 

Time to shock the sector, and to offer up help in this area

Considering owed, earned and shared channels, we… 

  • Crafted an informative press release with strong news hooks and data to engage the accountancy media.. 

  • Designed a new content hub for caba’s website that helped meet the high search demand queries on more complicated questions like ‘how to overcome addiction’ difference between habit and addiction’ and more. 

  • Created engaging videos for social and websites with in-house experts. 

  • Developed compelling media stories around distinct and more focused topics like crypto addiction, invisible addictions, and gambling addictions, while partnering with external psychologists who are experienced in addictions for added authority.  

The results

Offsite media performance: 

  • 44 Brand mentions  

  • 39 Total backlinks  

  • 245k Estimated coverage views 

  • 55% of coverage included the campaign’s key messaging 

  • 45% included reactive storytelling with comments from our expert 


The onsite impact: 

  • 25% increase in mental health-related calls to caba’s 24-hour helpline 

  • 1.5k page views on the newly created addiction help hub landing page in just 2 months 

  • 14 new keywords caba are ranking for, including ‘causes of addiction’ and ‘how to overcome addiction’  

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