Shop for Help
AWARE
Issue 58 | March 2021
Agency
Forsman & Bodenfors Singapore
Creative Team
Creatives: Shum Qihao, Lena Paik Designer: Jason Feng
Other Credits
Campaign Manager: Adrian Ortiz Engagement Lead: Sanna Britsman Innovations Officer: Carolina Rodriguez
Date
July – December 2020
Background
Since the introduction of lockdown (“circuit breaker”) measures in Singapore from April 2020, there has been a significant increase in domestic violence.
Gender-equality group AWARE received a total of 752 calls to its Helplines in May 2020 (a 137% increase in family violence reports 436% increase in emotional and psychological distress vs 2019). This was a new, worrying, all-time high record for the organization, whose Helpline had been in place since 1991. AWARE urgently wanted to reach more women with their helpline. The objective was to find new, innovative ways to make AWARE's services accessible to women while trapped at home, lacking privacy.
Idea
While studying lockdown behavior, one trend was clear: the shift to online shopping. As the pandemic progressed, e-commerce sales spiked by 71.1%. Women were not only purchasing items, but actively searching and browsing more. The idea was to leverage on this media behavior and turn it into a most unlikely gateway for assistance - one where women could literally 'Shop For Help’. The idea was to hide the mechanics for connecting with Aware in a place abuser would never look - a women's fashion site. What appears as just a regular shopping promotion page, is revealed to be a hidden message from AWARE, and a way to contact them. By providing a disguise, the aim was to make women feel safe enough to ask for help.
Keeping the promotion 'stealthy' was key to the approach. There was no paid media investment to support it. Instead they relied on Love, Bonito's high organic traffic, organic social posts and WOM between women to spread the word.
Results
The campaign ran throughout Singapore's circuit breaker phase 2, when women needed it most.
After the campaign launched, 18% of all chat sessions were referred to AWARE via ShopForHelp. This illustrates how important this touchpoint became in AWARE's overall community outreach strategy during lockdown.
The ShopForHelp campaign also helped expand AWARE's reach to new demographics, connecting a whole new group of women—Love Bonito's community—to AWARE's support.