Why is this work relevant for Direct?

This is a story of how we captured an invisible target. In the Philippines, mental health remains a taboo topic. The stigma makes it difficult to open up, making our target almost invisible. To connect with them, we seeded posts that captured what exactly they could be going through using Complex Emojis, created based on most common combinations of emotions experienced during the pandemic. They were then led to a 24/7 mental health chatbot, designed to help people open up. The chatbot could recognize keywords when human intervention was needed, and connected them to free one-on-one psychologist consultations.

Background

In the middle of the world’s longest lockdown came a silent pandemic raging in the background, the mental health pandemic. Which was quite alarming with the National Center for Mental Health reporting over a 100% spike on daily hotline calls. The goal was to help raise awareness on this important mental health concern, help people open up about mental health, and get them the mental health support they need.

Describe the creative idea (30% of vote)

To help people cope and make better sense of the complicated emotions brought about by these complicated times, MindNation, one of Asia's pioneer mental healthcare systems, created the world’s first-ever Complex Emojis. The idea was to recreate the familiar emojis to reflect the complicated times, based on the most common combinations of emotions experienced during the pandemic. A simple redesign and a lighthearted way of letting people know that it’s okay to feel a lot of different things all at once, eventually leading them to access 24/7 mental health support for free.

Describe the strategy (20% of vote)

In the Philippines, mental health still remains to be a taboo topic, quite underrepresented in media. There is still a persistent stigma attached to mental health conditions. So it’s difficult to open up, especially during the lockdown when people are feeling new, unfamiliar, complicated emotions that were hard to understand, let alone verbalize. The strategy was to truly capture what people are going through and create a safe space where they can open up. By making them feel seen, validated and understood, and giving them easy, friction-less ways to open up and get the support they need any time they need it.

Describe the execution (20% of vote)

To help people cope and make better sense of the complicated emotions brought about by these complicated times, MindNation, one of Asia's pioneer mental healthcare systems, created the world’s first-ever Complex Emojis. Designed based on the most common combinations emotions experienced in the pandemic. Launched as social posts and as GIF stickers to connect to people with the same complex emotions, the Complex Emojis led to a 24/7 mental health chatbot designed to help people talk about what they’re going through. But more importantly, the chatbot could recognize keywords when human intervention was needed, and connected people to free psychologist consultations.

List the results (30% of vote)

On the first day of the launch, MindNation received a message every 3 minutes. A total of 1,927 one-on-one conversations opened and created safe spaces for people to talk about their mental health. With 95% average satisfaction rating on quality of mental health support provided.