Indonesian and Vietnamese women face gender biased societal expectations throughout their lives, with many growing up internalizing and projecting these values onto themselves without realizing.

How can we use the power of social media to create conversations around breaking the gender biases, together with Google Search.

The objective of the campaign is to create awareness and social conversations around gender equality and the gender bias Indonesian and Vietnamese women face.

Whereas internalised social expectations drive the way women search, search is also a powerful tool of change.

#Searchforchange is a social-first platform to call out the societal expectations women face, and change the conversation through empowering first-hand storytelling by regular women & female KOLs who have broken away from their internalised biases, tuned into their own real voices and searched for their own path.

Target audience: Indonesian and Vietnamese women aged 18-45 active on social platforms.

We used Google trends data to identify 3 verticals where the audience’s search interest as well as societal expectations overlap: Appearances, family, career.

We created a 3-prong social-first strategy that was activated around the International Women’s Day on YouTube, TikTok, IG and FB.

The social-first ecosystem included 3 content types designed to work holistically to maximise the amount of conversations.

Content type 1: Six #Searchforchange hero stories

Content type 2: Paid & unpaid influencer reactions to the seeded hero stories: each native to social platform

Content type 3: ‘What I used to Google vs. what I Google now’ UGC activation designed for creators used to easy-to-create trends: created for TikTok and YouTube shorts.

3 content types working holistically to drive conversations around the International Women’s Day.

Content type 1: #Searchforchange hero stories

6 'before-after' search evolution stories of women who had overcome biases that drove the way they searched: from trying to get pregnant to becoming a mother through adoption, from overcoming questioning surrounding female athletes, to the appearance pressures of being born as albino, as well as combining a career and family.

Content type 2: Influencer reactions to the seeded hero stories

Influencers shared their experiences about the internalised biases that used to drive their search behaviour, and what changed it.

Content type 3: ‘What I used to Google vs. what I Google now’ UGC activation

TikTok & IGS activation for creators used to Easy-to-create trends; a format with a catchy tune to share 'what I used to Google vs. What I Google now', bringing to life their before-after mindset shift.

The campaign’s main objective was to create social conversations around #Searchforchange. The campaign beat the year 2022 results (1993 conversations) by 9.4x, generating 18662 social conversations around #Searchforchange.

Secondly, we aimed for positive online conversations: Positive net sentiment of #Searchforchange was 83% ID, 84% VN, neutral 17% ID, 16% VN, negative next to 0 in both, meaning there was practically no negative sentiment.

Lastly, we aimed for awareness: On top of our key metric of conversations, the campaign garnered over 103 million views and over 1 million likes with women sharing the content on their social platforms, thanks to data-driven insight and relatable execution as well as social-first media & content choices that all worked hand in hand.