The Campaign

The goal of education in Korea is SAT itself. Korea is ranked 1st in academic stress yet lowest in students’ life satisfaction index among OECD nations. Teenagers with low self-esteem sometimes kill themselves because of low mock test scores. The only education broadcasting TV network in Korea, EBS wanted to heal students who can’t avoid test. We gave attention to the media characteristics of test paper, and used it for the sake of stressed-out Korean students. The Healing Exam: an exam that became a love letter – A child is the apple of the eye of parents, regardless of test scores. EBS made a special message to students and inserted it to the paper, so that students can read it from the paper and write down their own heart-felt reply to parents. This test paper was actually used on the EBS regular mock test day, and students in the tense atmosphere got

Creative Execution

An exam question set by students’ mothers Regardless of the children’s SAT scores, they mean everything to their parents. To encourage the students, EBS made an exam paper with a question where the students couldn’t get wrong, by using a letter written by their parents themselves as an exam text. PROCESS 1. Secretly contact the students’ parents and receive a letter written for their children, who have the SAT exam ahead. 2. Set the letter into the respective students’ language section of the exam. 3. The students answer the exam question set by their own mothers. Exhibitions are held, displaying the actual exam answers, so that more people can share their feelings. Use of media The campaign itself was executed as an event and exhibition and the film was put up to EBS website, Facebook fan page, EBS blog, Naver TV channel and YouTube. There were a lot of PR articles related to the campaign and

Results

The Healing Exam campaign was executed throughout high schools in Korea. Most students wrote down their candid reply on the paper exceeding the 20 words limit. They also gave a feedback that the burden of test got lifted after the Healing Exam. Parents sent a note of appreciation that they were given an opportunity to convey a sincere message to their child. The Healing Exam film recorded more than 7 million views just two days after the release and was put under highlight from media and produced a lot of PR articles. The campaign itself was also enthusiastically received by the general republic and created into a documentary film, which was aired on November 30th 2015. Students’ replies were collected and displayed at the exhibition. Furthermore, the platform that sends a message of encouragement to college prep students was disseminated across multiple high schools in Korea. It not only consoled test-taking students

The campaign itself was executed as an event and exhibition and the film was put up to EBS website, Facebook fan page, EBS blog, Naver TV channel and YouTube. There were a lot of PR articles related to the campaign and OOH had been put up on the metro by the time when test scores were announced. And the Healing Exam platform itself spread across other Korean high schools where teachers send their message of encouragement to students on the last mock test day.

Korean students can’t evade taking a test. Can we heal these students who suffer from the test? Test paper can stress out students, but it is also a special media that contains various articles. It can be an astonishing media for Korean students if used in a smart manner. The Healing Exam: an exam that became a love letter. EBS carried a message of encouragement from parents to their children on the language section of SAT mock test. Two weeks prior to the mock test, parents were contacted secretly and given a mission to write a letter to their child. EBS used these messages as an article to create a question and answers to the question were displayed at the exhibition. In addition, we also released the viral film on the date of SAT and put OOH to the metro by the date when the test result was announced so that more