Forging a New Path for Mental Health

COMPASS Pathways is not your average healthcare company. “We created COMPASS Pathways because it was a desperate need,” explains co-founder George Goldsmith. “We figured somebody better do it, and it may as well be us.”

With a mission to stop mental health suffering at scale, COMPASS Pathways is set up as an innovator in the mental healthcare space, building and facilitating care models that blend medicine, psychological support and digital tools to offer patient-centered care and game-changing outcomes.

The company’s inaugural treatment uses a synthetic form of psilocybin, the psychoactive compound found in magic mushrooms.

Called COMP360 psilocybin therapy, it aims to tackle treatment resistant depression, and a phase 3 clinical trial of the treatment (the final stage prior to FDA approval) is already underway. No mushrooms were harmed in this work.

frog partnered with COMPASS Pathways to help them supercharge the impact of their impending investor day. The frog team delivered a refined business strategy articulation, investor deck branding and narrative, a ‘vision film’ to convey the potential human impact of the company’s innovative care models, and a documentary-style mini film to bring to life the personal story of one depression sufferer.

Depression affects more than 320 million people worldwide—and for 100 million, traditional treatments don’t work. That scale of human suffering is what COMPASS Pathways is set up to tackle. A frog team of brand designers, writers and strategists was tasked with using that mission as a starting point to capture the hearts and minds of investors and prospective stakeholders.

Working closely with COMPASS Pathways, the frog team crafted a presentation for the company’s investor day, which conveyed the nuances of living with depression. Through research, market analysis, and immersion with stakeholders, the frog team was able to outline a roadmap that highlighted that solving for mental health requires much more than developing new medicines.

Through an iterative, collaborative process, frog articulated a need for forging new pathways, partnerships and innovative care models, which became the basis of a new COMPASS Pathways value proposition. For COMPASS Pathways, psychedelics were the initial keys, not the end-point of a much bigger purpose, and during the project, frog and COMPASS Pathways worked to make that purpose real, personal and convincible to investors.

To help land the emotional side of the COMPASS Pathways story, frog storyboarded, directed and produced a documentary-style short film, featuring a clinical trial subject who has experienced psilocybin therapy firsthand (though not a COMPASS Pathways patient). The team spent a day with Kirk, conducting a recorded interview about his experiences with depression after the passing of his mother. He shared his story, giving a truly vulnerable account of the potential good that psilocybin therapy can have on people suffering with treatment-resistant depression.

That sentiment was echoed in a manifesto film, which set up the company’s transformational approach and was played at the COMPASS Pathways investor day. The film helped set the tone for the event, capturing the spirit of the company and the passion of its people.