Building the social presence behind the world’s biggest men’s mental fitness app

Mettle is the mental fitness app for men, founded by Bear Grylls and Dr Alex George. One of the most recognisable adventurers on the planet. One of the UK’s best-known doctors. A mission to build the biggest men’s mental health platform in the world.

The app launched with a founding story most brands would kill for. Bear Grylls has over a hundred million followers across his channels. Dr Alex George has been the face of mental health advocacy in the UK for years. The product was built on real science, with real structure, for a problem that affects millions of men and gets talked about by almost none of them.

On the surface, nothing about Mettle looked like it needed help being seen.

But founders aren’t a feed. A brand can’t post Bear Grylls every day, and it can’t rely on his audience to become its own. Mettle needed its own voice on Instagram, one that was consistent, credible and built for the men it was trying to reach, not the fans of the people who built it.

The founders could open the door. The content had to keep men in the room.

Men’s mental health is the hardest category on social media to get right. Too polished and it looks like an advert. Too earnest and men scroll past. Too clinical and it feels like a lecture. The brand needed content that felt like it came from men, for men, with the authority of the founders behind it and none of the distance.

To grow, Mettle didn’t need a bigger launch. It needed a feed that could carry the mission every single day, whether or not Bear was in the frame.

We built Mettle a voice of its own, so the mission didn’t depend on who was in the frame.

The insight was simple: the brand had to become more than its founders.

Bear Grylls and Dr Alex George give Mettle instant trust. But trust in the founders isn’t the same as a relationship with the app. For men to download it, use it and tell their mates, they needed to see Mettle as its own thing: a brand with a point of view, a tone they recognised, and content that showed up consistently without needing a celebrity attached. The founders are the reason people look. The feed is the reason they stay.

“When you’ve got Bear Grylls as a founder, the temptation is to lean on that in every post. But that builds Bear’s audience, not Mettle’s. The job was to build a brand that could stand on its own, so that when Bear does show up, it lands harder because there’s something underneath it.”Finn Hyett, founder of Proteus Digital

“Men don’t talk about their mental health because a celebrity told them to. They talk because someone who looks like them did first. Mettle’s feed had to be that someone.”

The second insight was about format. Mental fitness is a daily habit, so the content had to behave like one. Not big campaign moments every few months, but a steady, structured presence that normalised the conversation and made Mettle the brand that was always there. Real men, real conversations, filmed properly and cut for the way men actually watch.

Building a content engine that ran every month, with or without the founders.

Our strategy was to give Mettle a content engine that ran every month, with or without the founders.

A dedicated men’s mental health campaign was built around street interviews and a collaboration with barbers. The barbershop is where men already talk, so we took the camera there. The campaign gave Mettle a body of content that showed the conversation happening, not just encouraging it.

This content works with the founders, not instead of them. When Bear or Dr Alex post, the brand’s feed has already done the groundwork. The audience knows what Mettle is, what it sounds like and who it’s for. The founder content amplifies something that’s already there.

“Mettle is trying to do something genuinely big, and big missions need boring consistency behind them. Our job was the consistency. Film every month, put real men on screen, keep the tone right, and make sure the brand showed up whether or not the famous people did. That’s what turns a launch into a platform.”Finn Hyett, founder of Proteus Digital