2023 Winner

BronzeBest Integrated Campaign

Kids Help Phone
"KHP"
Epitaph Group
Rise UP is a 24/7 wellness support service run through Kids Help Phone with the main goal of engaging black youth in Canada to get the support they need for their mental health. Awareness of the service was still fairly low amongst black youth who may see the greatest benefit from these services.

“KHP” wanted to engage with the community in a way that helped to demonstrate that the service was not just another call line, but that young members of the BIPOC community would be met with support on the other end of the text or call line trained and able to support their mental health needs connected to specific community, cultural, and lived experiences that are unique to
black youth in Canada.

This re-assures youth that this service was a fit for them and their needs “KHP” with the support of Wattpad didn’t just speak to them but found voices with the already engaged black writing community to share their personal mental health stories and lend voice to the cause.

Wattpad is a growing and dynamic online community of writers and readers engaged in creating and consuming content often specific to niche groups or lived experiences not captured within mainstream literature. As the lead platform in their media integration, it became the perfect fit to amplify the voices of Black writers to reach the youth seeking encouragement and support from within their
own online community.

Three Black writers were selected from existing Wattpad creators to showcase letters to their younger selves giving voice to the concerns they faced as youth within the black community starting back to school to offer words of encouragement and self-reflection on an often-turbulent time in the lives of black youth today. The content they produced had a profound impact on readers who leaned into the supportive message surrounding mental health and engaged in commenting and sharing the stories within the Wattpad platform.

Seeing the engagement bloom online within the Wattpad community of black youth, messaging needed to be further amplified offline to enable reach beyond the digital community borders to share the message of support and information surrounding the resources available through “KHP”. A full stack media integration plan was then launched into action sharing the stories of the black creators online via social media and even online video platforms as the stories were animated into dynamic and powerful video shorts.

Once the animated video spots were given life, they also had the potential to jump offline into offline channels where attention sat front and center and a youth focused cinema buy was put into action just before the hectic holiday period with special focus paid to supporting inventory against titles to engage with the black youth community including Wakanda Forever, and Creed.

With many of the black youth community showing interest and engagement throughout the campaign “KHP” saw great success in both digital measurement metrics and awareness metrics following the campaign period. The Wattpad letter content from their black creators generated over 16,500 completed reads and over 5.5MM impressions. The “KHP” Rise Up page traffic increased by over 10x during the campaign period driven by social, search, Wattpad, and the OLV channels in market. Through the Fall campaign period awareness for “KHP” among Black Canadian youth also increased over 17% compared to the same period the previous year, this is a staggering YOY growth in awareness as it surpassed awareness growth in all other “KHP” community supported initiatives
live during this time.

Overall, the largest indication of success for this campaign is the increase in Black youth both seeking and receiving support through text and call lines via Rise Up – Rise up saw almost double the engagement from Black Youth seeking support YOY ensuring the black youth community receives the support they deserve for their mental health concerns.

Credits

Kids Help Phone Canada
Epitaph Group Canada
Wattpad