Tennis isn’t normally an enormous matter within the Slack channels at Calm, the mindfulness app valued at $2 billion. However when Naomi Osaka immediately withdrew from the French Open on Memorial Day, citing her psychological well being, the volleys about her resolution began flying. By the following morning, Calm’s international head of promoting and communications, Monica Austin, had convened of us from throughout the corporate’s advertising and marketing, PR, expertise, and content material groups to establish the model’s potential function within the dialog—and consider the danger. Calm, which has labored with such celebrities as Matthew McConaughey and LeBron James however had no relationship with Osaka, needed to resolve whether or not it may insert itself into the heated debate concerning Osaka’s selection. Would outstanding sportswriters and the likes of British pundit Piers Morgan pillory Calm as they’d Osaka? Would even Osaka supporters discover Calm’s participation crass?
Austin’s impromptu staff rapidly determined that Calm may leap in with out feeling like an outsider—as long as it amplified its “psychological well being is well being” message. The important thing was determining the suitable strategy to do it.
Inside 48 hours, the corporate had tweeted that it could be donating $15,000—the sum of Osaka’s advantageous—to Laureus Sport, a French psychological well being group. Calm additionally dedicated to paying fines for any gamers who opted out of 2021 Grand Slam media appearances, and to donate the identical worth to Laureus Sport. “After we present up in in style tradition,” says cofounder and co-CEO Michael Acton Smith, “we do must be cautious we’re not being tone-deaf or too goofy, or too severe.”
Calm’s fast response was an ace, incomes it $28 million price of consideration inside every week, in response to media-monitoring agency Important Point out, and elevating it into the pantheon of brand name entrepreneurs who can each take part in and form cultural discourse, equivalent to Nike and Beats by Dre (each official Osaka sponsors). However Calm doesn’t have many years of expertise enjoying this sport. It lacks the tangible affinity individuals ascribe to footwear and headphones. Calm additionally wades into fraught territory by establishing its id round such an intensely private challenge. As the corporate strikes towards an IPO, the strain to carry out solely grows.
Calm’s intuition to leap into cultural debates is a pillar of what Austin calls the corporate’s 50-50 technique. Half the time, Calm plans out its advertising and marketing campaigns. “The opposite 50% of the time, it’s about leaning into the place the dialog is going on in tradition,” says Austin, who joined from Netflix in April, “whereas sticking to our mission to destigmatize the dialog round psychological well being.”
Calm has lengthy sought to suffuse popular culture into its app, and enlisted massive names to take action. In July 2020, it launched a 39-minute bedtime story known as Dream With Me, learn by pop star Harry Types, and the moment demand briefly crashed the app. Then there was its intelligent drafting off the most important single occasion of 2020: the U.S. presidential election. Amid the excessive drama of what was billed as an important election of our lives, Calm drew consideration to itself throughout CNN’s cacophonous presentation with the televisual equal of a banner advert—its demure, blue cursive brand sat incongruously alongside CNN’s evident purple graphics—providing a reminder to breathe, as John King zoomed into new returns. Everybody from Advert Age to Teen Vogue declared Calm the massive winner of November 3, 2020. The next day, Calm vaulted 54 spots in Apple’s App Retailer rankings, in response to Sensor Tower, to No. 65 general.
Each side of Calm’s technique are orchestrated to construct its id over the long run. “That is one element of building Calm as a model that doesn’t merely promote psychological well being, however can be invested in defending it,” says Forrester vice chairman and principal analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee. “The model emerges as an advocate and well-wisher, and most significantly, a information.”
Calm wants to differentiate itself in an more and more crowded marketplace for digital psychological well being companies. Along with competing towards Headspace—which has the same providing (see sidebar)—124 psychological well being startups (together with Calm) collectively raised $1.5 billion in 2020, in response to CB Insights. Within the first three months of 2021, they collected one other $852 million from buyers.
Critics see this as extra advertising and marketing than mindfulness. Randima Fernando, cofounder and government director of the Middle for Humane Know-how, informed the New York Occasions in February, “Mindfulness is much less about lowering stress and extra about lowering dissatisfaction by way of direct investigation of our expertise. However advertising and marketing stress discount is extra profitable, and positively extra prone to win a obtain or company account.”
Acton Smith says his aim is for Calm to be to psychological well being what Nike has develop into for bodily exercise. When Nike began within the Seventies, health wasn’t mainstream. “Nike brilliantly, by way of advertising and marketing and partnerships, normalized it, and sprinkled plenty of cool on it,” he says. “We’re doing the identical with Calm. That psychological well being wave goes to be simply as massive.” Calm’s technique could stroll the road between intelligent and crass, nevertheless it positively received’t put you to sleep.
How Calm shapes up towards its major rival, Headspace
Who
Calm: Est. 2012, $218 M in VC funding, 60% Feminine/40% Male customers
Headspace: Est. 2010, $215.9 M in VC funding, 50% Feminine/50% Male customers
Sleep
Calm: Added Sleep Tales in 2016 and now there are 100+, narrated by dreamy voices like Harry Types and Matthew McConaughey
Headspace: Launched Sleepcasts in 2018, a 45-minute podcast/bedtime-story hybrid for adults
Music
Calm: Debuted popular-songs library in 2017, altered by Calm to bolster serenity primarily based on while you hear
Headspace: Appointed John Legend chief music officer in 2020 to curate stations to advertise focus
Streaming
Calm: A World of Calm (October 1, 2020, HBO Max) takes a NatGeo doc–type method to rest, narrated by stars like Idris Elba
Headspace: Headspace Information to Meditation (January 1, 2021, Netflix) seeks to ship zen by way of eight quick, animated episodes
Youngsters
Calm: Thomas the Tank Engine and the Trolls are there to information enlightened youngsters
Headspace: A youth-friendly model launched in 2016, and a Sesame Road sleep podcast, Goodnight, World!, bowed in June 2021
