Why is this work relevant for PR?

The “I’m All Ears” campaign aimed to address a social issue, teen-suicide. It mainly used social media channels and earned media to reach out to teenagers in South Korea and influence public dialog.   The campaign featured a cast of superhero dogs with the power of super-listening. And the Life Insurance Social Philanthropy Foundation (LISPF) developed a digital version of the suicide helpline that would later serve as a proof of concept for a fully integrated, cross-platform counseling service for teens. Building on the success of the initial video, LISPF partnered with a popular music label to create two music videos.

Background

For teenagers in South Korea, the angst of adolescence combined with the ‘sturm und drang’ of college admissions, family conflicts, and bullying can become quite overwhelming. Self-harm is a common escape, and suicide among South Korean teens regularly outpaces the OECD average. In addition to therapy, suicide hotlines have been societies’ most humane attempt at prevention, the idea that the simple act of listening is sometimes enough to derail dangerous trains of thought. LISPF set about to build on that, to address the fact that many South Korean teens feel they don’t have anyone to talk to, and to make “listening” more accessible to today’s teens.

Describe the creative idea (20% of vote)

For the “messengers” of the campaign, inspired by a play on Korean words, we settled on man’s best friend. If ever an animal, went the thinking, had an infinite capacity to listen, it would be a dog. We created five dog characters, not quite worthy of a Marvel franchise, but superheroes in their own right; heroes that could speak the teenage vernacular and have the power of super-listening.

Describe the strategy (30% of vote)

The “I’m All Ears” campaign was developed to help prevent teenage suicide through: 1) Content – We wanted to develop content that conveyed to teenagers a non-patronizing understanding of the issues and societal pressures they face, and we wanted the “messengers” of that content to be highly approachable. 2) Communication – We wanted to “listen”, modernizing the suicide hotline to bring it more in line with the tendencies of today’s teens, and thereby increase the likelihood that they would reach out for help in times of trouble.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

LISPF released a video featuring our superhero dogs on a mission to lend an ear and rescue teenagers in trouble. And we took the suicide hotline digital that offered text-based counseling for teenagers. In 2018, we produce two music videos for the campaign with JYP Entertainment, a record label popular among teens, one featuring popular musicians. The lyrics of the songs spoke to the most pressing concerns among teens, insights revealed by the initial campaign. We developed a fully integrated digital counseling service for teens with the Ministry of Education. This new real-time would be available via texting, as an app, and on South Korea’s most popular messaging service, Kakao Talk. Through partnerships with public broadcaster EBS and the Ministry of Education, these songs and messages, as well as news of the availability of digital counseling services, were repeatedly promoted on-air and in schools across the country.

List the results (30% of vote) – must include at least two of the following tiers:

While the initial campaign video attracted some 700,000 views on YouTube and Facebook, the 2018 music videos brought in a combined 1,000,000+ more views (247,973 views for the hip-hop song, 776,224 views for the idol song). The idol song topped the list of real-time search words on South Korea’s leading music streaming service, and rose to 72 on the Naver (Korea’s most popular portal site) Music chart. The viral effects were significant: the songs resulted in 108 cover videos in 14 languages. These videos attracted a further 4,249,787 views. The campaign resulted in 405 instances of media coverage in print, radio, and TV, including a feature by Billboard. And most importantly, since September 2018, the “I’m All Ears” digital counseling service has received some 23,533 messages from teens in trouble.