The Brief

The objective of the campaign was to raise the issue of ‘filial piety’ in Singapore - a pertinent issue in the city-state whose population is turning increasingly grey ala Japan. Our audience was: a) The sandwiched ‘middle’ generation, who love their parents, but have themselves become parents and need to straddle between their children and elders. b) The youth, who love their parents, but will soon join the sandwiched generation and gradually neglect their familial commitments because of careers. What we needed to do is create the largest and the most impactful conversation on filial piety ever witnessed in Singapore.

Creative Execution

We wanted to create a national conversation. The conversation needed to be public. We wanted stories of people to inspire those who had lost their way. We wanted people to recommit to their parents publicly. We wanted to create a platform where parents and children came together to discuss the issue.

Describe the creative solution to the brief/objective.

Within families, love flows freely – downwards from parent to child. We wanted to challenge this with a powerful insight: that people only consider how they love their parents when they think about how their kids will love them. Revolving our idea around the simple thought of how one generation loves. The next generation learns we created a three-minute film which captured the realistic dynamics of a 3-generational household. Running on prime-time television, cable and cinema, the content was also shared on social media - where people could tell their own stories as well as make commitments to their parents.

Results

Although just 4 weeks into this campaign, there are already more than 200,000 views of the film on social media. The Facebook page has more than 37,000 (likes/fans) making it the third largest Facebook campaign in Singapore, ever. We have had 80,000 unique page views, close to 10,000 interactions and more than 400 unique stories and pledges. The campaign has become a national phenomenon with positive public feedback but perhaps more importantly, Singapore’s largest banks have decided to become part of the effort and are actively supporting it by creating financial products that enable families to help the elderly.