Over the last decade, Indonesia and Vietnam have witnessed notable progress in gender equality, evidenced by a substantial surge in search interest regarding gender diversity, the gender pay gap, female education, and businesses led by women.

Despite these advancements, women around Southeast Asia continue to grapple with societal expectations, navigating narrow standards that dictate their appearance and behaviour. The #Searchforchange campaign emerged as a catalyst for change, fostering impactful conversations about the societal expectations women encounter, particularly on and around International Women's Day. The movement not only sheds light on these expectations but to also provide tangible solutions that is to change their habits in search, and to #SearchForChange.

Google is driven by strong DEI values, with commitment to societal inclusion and equality. Google's mission is to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. Google Search is a helpful product to inspire and enable positive societal change.

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.

The brief was to 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.

Staying true to Google’s DEI goals, the work was created by an all-female team in nearly all key positions, with talent from Singapore, Vietnam and Indonesia.

Both in Indonesia and Vietnam traditional gender roles persist, with decisions often dominated by men. Gendered expectations around work and family restrict women's mobility and agency and create pressures around appearances. These societal expectations are so strong that they drive the way women search, hence queries such as ‘can women work in tech’, ‘What’s the average age to get married’ and ‘How to get a fair skin’ are common.

Both Indonesia and Vietnam have progressed in gender equality, however significant gaps remain which spurred us to look for women overcoming respective challenges in these areas.

Indonesia:

Low female labor force participation (53%) despite high education rates.

Occupational segregation limits women to lower-paying jobs.

Limited childcare options hinder women's career advancement.

Improvements in legal framework offer hope. However, implementation is still in early stages.

Vietnam:

Stronger female labor force participation (75%) but persists in lower-paying sectors.

Rural women face a double burden of farm work and household duties.

Early marriage remains a concern, especially in rural areas.

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.