Case Study

Launching Soluna — Experiential Marketing for a State Funded Youth Mental Health Platform

A statewide, campaign that launched a behavioral health app for Californians ages 13–25 — built around a 1,200-mile cycling tour from the Oregon border to Mexico, sequenced with earned media in every major California market and a capstone community activation in San Diego.

Context

Kooth Digital Health, a UK listed digital mental health company, won the contract to build Soluna — the consumer facing behavioral health app for Californians ages 13–25 — under California's $4.6 billion Children and Youth Behavioral Health Initiative (CYBHI). The platform was a cornerstone of Governor Newsom's Master Plan for Kids' Mental Health and a high-visibility public commitment from the Department of Health Care Services.

Launching a state funded youth mental health app requires a different playbook than launching a venture backed consumer product. The audience is young, skeptical of state funded anything, and exists in a category where awareness has to feel earned, not advertised. A traditional press release plus paid social would have read as procurement marketing — the worst possible framing for reaching 13–25-year-olds.

The Challenge

Three things had to happen simultaneously at launch:

  • Build statewide awareness for a free app in a category where free is often associated with low quality

  • Generate local broadcast and lifestyle coverage in every major California media market — Sacramento, San Francisco, Fresno, Orange County, Los Angeles, San Diego

  • Avoid the "state-funded vendor" framing that would have made Soluna feel like a government program instead of a resource teenagers and young adults would actually open

The launch needed a human protagonist that local news would naturally cover, a story arc that built over weeks rather than landing in one news cycle, and a community activation that grounded the brand in something more durable than impressions.

The Approach

The Soluna California Cycle Tour was designed as a hero led, earned media-first experiential marketing campaign with a sequenced statewide footprint and a community capstone.

Strategic decisions that shaped the work:

  • A hero outside the company. The campaign was built around Ed Hack, a UK rooted ultra endurance adventure cyclist with a personal history of anxiety and substance use. Ed had previously cycled 10,000 miles from the UK to Australia for charity. By having an outside athlete — not a Kooth executive or a state official — deliver every brand mention, the campaign avoided procurement announcement framing and reads as a human interest story local TV news naturally picks up.

  • A statewide route, not a market-by-market tour. A 1,200-mile end to end ride from the Oregon border to the Mexico border at San Ysidro created a continuous narrative arc instead of disconnected press events. Real world adversity — storms, dog encounters, 65 mph winds, three weather driven reroutes — generated organic content that pure paid media could not have produced.

  • Sequenced local pickup, not a single news beat. Each major California city along the route had its own local media moment as Ed approached. By San Diego, the campaign had built six weeks of momentum into the capstone event.

  • Community activation, not just press. The tour ended February 18, 2024, with a free community ride at Balboa Park in San Diego, co-hosted with the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition — a credentialed local nonprofit that lent credibility and mobilized rider attendance without requiring a formal grant relationship.

  • Owned content infrastructure. A dedicated campaign hub at cycletour.solunaapp.com served as the "Where's Ed" tracking surface and routed traffic to the Soluna app. Owned blog content on Kooth's site, supplemented by Ed's Instagram and YouTube channels (@hackisoutthere), kept the campaign supplied with material across the full 30+ riding days.

What Was Built

The work included:

  • A 30+ day, 1,200-mile statewide cycling tour designed as the public-facing launch activation for Soluna

  • Hero recruitment and narrative development with Ed Hack as the public protagonist

  • Press architecture coordinated with Metis Communications, including BusinessWire launch syndication on January 24, 2024, ongoing trade press placement, and sequenced local TV pickup

  • An interactive campaign hub at cycletour.solunaapp.com tracking progress in real time and routing traffic to the app

  • Owned content program on the Kooth blog covering kickoff, mid-tour reflection, and post-tour summary

  • Real-time social content strategy across Ed's Instagram and YouTube channels, designed for adventure-content audiences as well as behavioral health audiences

  • Multi-stakeholder coordination across Kooth Digital Health, the California Department of Health Care Services, the San Diego County Bicycle Coalition, athlete partners (including Stanford soccer mental-health advocate Andrea Kitahata, psychologist Dr. Matt Tatum, and jet suit pilot Paul Stronger), and Sacramento State student communities

  • A capstone community ride event at Balboa Park, San Diego, on February 18, 2024

OUTCOMES

The Soluna launch — of which the cycle tour was the headline activation — significantly exceeded performance targets.

Publicly disclosed results:

  • 144,000+ California registrations on Soluna by the end of 2025, per Kooth investor disclosures

  • DHCS Impact Report praised the platform, describing it as "reimagining behavioral health care delivery for children and youth"

  • Local broadcast and trade press coverage across the San Diego DMA (FOX 5 San Diego, ABC 10News, KPBS) and digital health trade press (Digital Health Global)

  • International social amplification via Ed Hack's adventure content reaching UK audiences (North Wales Live picked up the dog encounter reel)

  • Subsequent Kooth investor framing of the broader Soluna program as a model for state funded digital behavioral health delivery

The cycle tour itself functioned as an awareness driven, earned media play rather than a paid customer acquisition push. Specific tour attributable conversion figures are not publicly disclosed, but the structural outcome — a publicly visible, multi week, statewide launch narrative that DHCS and Kooth have continued to point to as proof of community engagement — is the campaign's primary deliverable.

The Strategic Lesson

For other organizations launching state-funded, regulated, or youth-targeted products, the takeaway is that conventional product launches fail in categories where the audience is skeptical of institutional framing.

Three patterns worth borrowing:

  • Use a hero outside the company. The credibility cost of having a vendor executive or state official deliver brand mentions in a youth mental health context is higher than most launches account for. An outside human protagonist with a real personal story rebuilds the credibility that institutional framing erodes.

  • Build a campaign arc, not a launch event. A multi-week, content generating narrative produces more durable awareness than a single news cycle. The 30-day duration of the cycle tour gave every California media market its own moment to cover the story.

  • Anchor with a community partner, not just press. The San Diego County Bicycle Coalition co-host did more for credibility than any single TV story. Community partnerships convert earned media attention into participatory adoption.

Most product launches in regulated or state funded categories under invest in experiential infrastructure and over invest in paid acquisition. The Soluna launch inverted that ratio — and the downstream registration numbers demosntrate the inversion was correct.

See the CAMPAIGN

The campaign archive is publicly available across multiple sources:

Launching a product into a regulated, youth, or state funded category?

Considering an experiential marketing campaign, a hero led product launch, or a multi market earned media program in healthcare, behavioral health, or public-sector contexts? Book a 20-minute working session. No deck, no pitch — bring one specific problem, leave with one concrete next step.

Book a Working Session