Translation launched a new ad for healthcare provider Kaiser Permanente starring Golden State Warriors point guard Stephen Curry.
The spot focuses on mental health and the stresses of being a professional athlete. At the opening of the spot Curry hearsskeptics deliver lines like “He’s not one of the greats yet” in his head.
NBA stars overcoming doubters on the way to their goals is nothing new for advertising, but this isn’t another spot for cars or sneakers. Rather, Curry is showing that even NBA players have to find ways to deal with stress and anxiety and the importance of mental health on behalf of Kaiser Permanente. His means of finding calm is something of an unusual one: a dip in a flotation tank.
That approach allows for a visually intriguing ad, in which Curry visualizes his mental stresses and overcomes them. While it may be hard for viewers to understand the stresses of succeeding in the NBA, the correlation to dealing with everyday stress and anxiety, and the message of the importance of paying attention to mental health, still comes across, summed up in the vaguely George Clinton-esque tagline, “Train the mind. The body will follow.”
“We’re moving from being more inspirational around telling people to thrive, to acknowledging that thriving is hard and difficult,” Lawrence Montgomery, Kaiser Permanente senior director of national advertising explained to AdAge. “That’s what you see in Stephen. For the everyday man and woman, being able to relate to that, we think, is powerful.”