Company: Evident Integrated Marketing & PR
Nomination Submitted by: Evident Strategic Research and Consulting, Inc.
Company Description: Evident is the leading purpose marketing firm in the Philippines. We put the clients’ purpose at the core of their marketing and communications and help them strike a balance between making a profit and doing good for the audience they serve.
Nomination Category: Communications & Marketing Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Communications or PR Campaign of the Year - Public Service
 Nomination Title: Konektado Tayo: Bridging the Parent-Teen Communication Gap
- Which will you submit for your nomination in this category, a video of up to five (5) minutes, explaining the nominated campaign or program - its genesis,development, planning, commission, and performance to date - OR written answers to the questions? (Choose one):
A video of up to five (5) minutes
- If you are submitting a video of up to five (5) minutes in length, provide the URL of the video here, OR attach it to your entry via the "Add Attachments, Videos, or Links to This Entry" link above, through which you may also upload a copy of your video. If you are submitting written answers to the questions, provide them in the appropriate spaces below:
- Specify the date on which this campaign or program was launched:
February 19, 2021 - October 31, 2021
- Describe the development of the campaign or program: the planning process, the goal setting, the creative and media development, the scheduling, etc. (up to 250 words):
Total 247 words used.
Consultations with the client and other stakeholders such as parents and public health experts allowed us to have a good understanding how love, sex, and relationships are discussed in Filipino households. This helped us define our target audience, online channel, campaign positioning, and messaging.
Facebook was the main chosen platform because of its reach and ability to foster social interaction. A Facebook page was created to provide advice and resources to guide parents and community workers in engaging teenage children in discussions about love, sex, relationships, and mental health. A private Facebook Group was also established where parents could safely share their experiences, questions, fears, and concerns about these topics. This online community-building allowed parents to address their concerns regarding their adolescent children by helping each other.
To ensure that we reached the right target audience, we deployed Facebook audience insights to guide the digital ad strategy. This helped in defining the attributes that would be of interest to them, allowing us to capture parents across the Philippines who would not otherwise be able to access this kind of information.
The campaign’s positioning and creative treatment were anchored on the insight that parents want their children and peers to respect and perceive them positively. Parents however fear being powerless because they lack knowledge and communication skills when addressing love, sex, and relationships. Pre-testing, including focus group discussions, ensured that campaign elements such as the brand voice and art direction would appeal and resonate to the target audience.
- Reference any attachments of supporting materials throughout this nomination and how they provide evidence of the claims you have made in this nomination (up to 250 words):
Total 156 words used.
1 John Hopkins Center for Communication Programs and RTI International. (2020).Technical Report on USAID’s ReachHealth’s Human-Centered Design Activity with Teens and Those who Influence Them.
2 University of the Philippines Population Institute (UPPI) and the Demographic Research and Development Foundation. (2014). 2013 Young Adult Fertility and Sexuality (YAFS) Study. Retrieved from: https://www.drdf.org.ph/sites/default/files/YAFS4%20Monograph.pdf
3 Cudis, C. (2022). Adolescent mothers lower by 23.8K in 2020. Philippine News Agency. Retrieved from: https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1166627
“With Konektado Tayo, parents will never be alone in this endeavor, as we commit to provide our shared efforts in creating strategies and avenues for meaningful dialogues with their children toward their overall development, their families and eventually, our nation.”
Juan Antonio Perez III
Executive Director
Commission on Population and Development (POPCOM)
Lalu, G. P. (2021). PopCom, USAID push for parent-teenager talks to counter teenage pregnancies. Philippine Daily Inquirer. Retrieved from https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1463235/popcom-usaid-push-for-parent-teenager-talks-to-counter-teenage-pregnancies#ixzz7cq7cYAvV
- Describe the genesis of the nominated campaign or program: the reasons it was initiated, the challenges it was created to address, the problems it was developed to solve, etc. (up to 250 words):
Total 249 words used.
In the Philippines, talking about sex remains taboo for the majority of families. While adolescents are expected to first learn about sex, love, and relationships at home1, Filipino parents traditionally did not have these conversations with their parents, leaving them ill-equipped and struggling to discuss these topics with their children.
Only 10% of Filipino adolescents reported discussing sex at home.2 Among the main reasons why Filipino parents do not openly discuss sex include cultural factors like hiya (shame and embarrassment) and conservatism due to Filipino Catholicism, the predominant religion.
This lack of open communication has led adolescents to seek sexual and reproductive health information from peers and online platforms. The reliance on unreliable sources of information can lead to unhealthy relationships, sexual abuse, and risky behaviors. Adolescent birth rates in the Philippines are among the highest in Southeast Asia, with 3.1% of 15 to 19-year-old girls giving birth.3
To help address this problem, the ReachHealth Project, a United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-funded project aimed at strengthening critical health services for Filipino families, collaborated with the Philippine Commission on Population and the Department of Health to implement a sexual literacy campaign called Konektado Tayo, or "We are Connected". This was designed to bridge the communication gap between parents and their children, specifically on adolescent sexuality and development. As support, Evident was tapped to implement a social media campaign that provided parents with credible information and reliable advice to help guide their children on these matters.
- Outline the activities and concrete results of this campaign or program since the beginning of July 2020. Even if your initiative started before July 2020, limit your response to activities and results since the beginning of July 2020 only (up to 250 words):
Total 250 words used.
Konektado Tayo is the first and only online communication initiative of its kind in the Philippines. While the campaign budget was relatively modest at 40,150 USD, Evident successfully reached and engaged millions of parents across the Philippines despite struggling with limited resources.
The consistent dissemination of communication materials from February to October 2021 allowed the campaign to exceed its target. Its online platforms reached 6.8 million people, which is 13.33% more than the original target of 6 million, and engaged 3.6 million people, which is a 20% increase over the original target of 3 million. While the campaign's ads targeted both parents, the captured audience was predominantly women at 81.4%, while men were at 18.4%. Filipino family culture and values place a high emphasis on the role of the mother in child-rearing and leading the discussion about sexual and adolescent health with their children.
Our monthly digital insights, which combined qualitative and quantitative analysis, were crucial to understand the audience's reception and engagement with our content. Feedback and comments from the audience were important in improving the content creation and amplification process.
In a country where talking about sex is taboo, social media, particularly Facebook, has become a powerful platform for easing boundaries when discussing sex. The Konektado Tayo’s success can be attributed by its ability to provide parents with reliable information, guidance, and contextualization within the same platform, enabling them to confidently talk with their children about love, sex, relationships, and mental health.
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