Google encouraged people to look after their mental health during the pandemic.
Objective:
As the pandemic was raging across Southeast Asia, everyone was focused on helping their loved ones and their friends. Anxiety levels were extremely high. Mental health was an important issue that most were not prepared to talk about. Google sought to shine a light on a crisis within a crisis.
Google's campaign objective was to reach as many people as fast as it could, attaining a minimum of 100 million views within the campaign period.
A second objective was to generate two times more social conversations for the campaign than the previous Google brand campaigns.
Target Audience:
Unlike most campaigns, the targeting for this one was different. Google had to become that trusted platform for people to come to and use to take proactive steps toward safeguarding their own mental health.
The campaign targeted everyone from young parents with kids locked up in their apartments to old parents getting by alone without being able to see their families to singles who had just lost their jobs,
to front-line workers who were working tirelessly without a care for their own health. Google's audience covered everyone who was feeling down due to the pandemic. The organization was determined not to let mental health become a crisis within a crisis.
Creative Strategy:
When the experts were highlighting the importance of mental health across the region during the pandemic, Google expected the search trends to correlate with these discussions. But to the company's surprise, hardly anyone was actively seeking or researching about the topic on Google. Which meant that despite it being a pandemic and even if the specialists were highlighting its importance, the world's societies were not ready to make mental health a key point of conversation.
Google realized that its job was not to amplify what the specialists were saying, but to build a platform that would enable and empower people to learn and educate themselves about mental health — in other words, to be a trusted go-to friend to help one learn and take proactive steps toward safeguarding mental health.
As everyone was on their toes looking for ways to help others, Google wanted them to take a momentary breather and spend a few minutes taking care of themselves too. Google wanted to make mental health a socially acceptable topic, to make it accessible for everyone across the region, and to remind people to take care of themselves as they took care of others.
Context:
This was the first year of a campaign of this nature for Google. In previous years, Google had focused on driving usage across specific products, but this year, due to the pandemic, the campaign pivoted from product stories to championing mental health.
Overall Campaign Execution:
Google sought to create a safe space and make mental health accessible across regions. Working with psychologists, the company created a toolkit of self-care skills that lived on google.com/covid-19. When a query related to COVID-19 was typed, the results provided extra support.
Google then created a brand video using real footage of people and influencers to remind viewers to take care of themselves as they took care of others. The creative inspired millions to search for self-care information.
Mobile Execution:
The entire campaign was built on a mobile first UX approach.
Vertical videos as well as social media executions were developed to harness the power of mobile and help take Google's storytelling to the next level.
The campaign aired across the region, targeting both android and apple devices. This ensured that Google covered over 95 percent of its audience.
At a time when the markets were scrambling to stay afloat, Google's mental health campaign was seen as a genuine way to help its users make the best of the tough times via Google's products and services.
The campaign achieved impressive results. Specifically:
