Brief Explanation

Help The Jobless activated writers from in/outside advertising with a particular writing exercise: selling a jobless person. If the jobless person would get invited for an interview, the participant would be invited for a Copywriting Master Class, after which he or she could get recruited as copywriter at Happiness Saigon. The campaign raised awareness around the fact that the number of jobless people in Vietnam is on the rise, promoted Happiness Saigon as an innovative agency, and attracted attention around the lost art of writing in Vietnam.

The Brief

We founded Happiness Saigon in January 2015 and are ambitious; in fact Happiness aims to be one of the agencies that will bring Vietnam on the map of creativity in SEA by 2017. As for every new agency, we faced challenges: limited awareness, no direct access to talents and/or partners. We needed to come up with an idea that would raise awareness around Happiness Saigon’s ambition, and establish our understanding of the market in terms of media and consumer connectivity. AND, we aimed to attract Vietnam’s most talented copywriter to join our ranks.

Describe the success of the promotion with both client and consumer including some quantifiable results

Almost 200 participants wrote 460 cover letters for 7 unemployed from whom 60% found a job. With only 10.000$ in media, we generated over 800.000$ back in earned media, due to popularity and WOM on social platforms (Campaign Asia Pacific, Brands Vietnam, advertisers’ blogs, and advertising influential Work Saigon). The buzz was so big, that local general media titles and the trade press were reached. 20 finalists were selected for the Copywriting Masterclass hosted by advertising influentials from Saatchi & Saatchi, RMIT University, Vietnamworks, Asia Life etc. to get a taste of copywriting and the advertising industry. Happiness tried to help the structural problem of long-time unemployment by encouraging jobless people to be more active and showing the importance of a good cover letter. Eventually 1 winner was given a full-time job as copywriter at Happiness Saigon

Explain why the method of promotion was most relevant to the product or service

The insight is that the hardest writing exercise is to sell yourself. And with the growing rate of Vietnamese jobless we made a connection: bring aspiring writers to help jobless people getting closer to an interview or a job. We called the campaign “Help the Jobless”. We selected 7 jobless people asking for help from the best writers in Vietnam. The writers with the most compelling letter (judged by the jobless, and a jury of media influencers in Vietnam) in order to win a seat in our copywriting Master Class, and when performing well on the final task – win the chance to work at Happiness Saigon as a copywriter.