Content Champions: Health Promotion Board

The Health Promotion Board (HPB) was established as a statutory board under the Ministry of Health, Singapore, in 2001 with the vision of building “A Nation of Healthy People”. HPB aims to empower Singaporeans to attain optimal health, increase the quality and years of healthy life and prevent illness, disability and premature death. 

As the key agency overseeing national health promotion and disease prevention programmes, HPB spearheads health education, promotion and prevention programmes as well as creates a health-supportive environment in Singapore.

Content Champions is a segment during MARKETING-INTERACTIVE's Content360 conference in Singapore in which we highlight brands who have made significant impact in the content marketing space through their campaigns. This campaign was first shortlisted for Marketing Excellence Awards 2023 and was further evaluated by the editorial team at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE to make the shortlist. 

Campaign: It's OKAY to reach out
Brand: Health Promotion Board 

Challenge

Singaporean youth are experiencing a mental health crisis. Various studies and data points paint a troubling picture of the state of the mental health of Singaporean youths.

For example, younger adults aged between 18 and 29 had the highest proportion of poor mental health across all ages. This has worsened in 2020 as compared to 2017. The number of suicides among youth aged 10 to 29 also hit a record high in 2021.

There is an urgent need to engage the youths of Singapore on a deeper level to encourage help-seeking behavior early to enable timely support and intervention. However, there are unique challenges affecting this generation such as a fear of negative judgement, the fear of burdening others and not knowing where and how to seek help. 

Strategy

Its goal was therefore to chip away at this stigma and to normalise the act of reaching out for help amongst Singaporean youth aged 15-24 years old.

To achieve this goal, HPB had the objective of increasing the willingness of youths to seek help, increase their intent to seek help and increase awareness on the various avenues where they can get help.

Our creative idea, "It’s OKAY to Reach Out" was born out of these objectives, with the campaign rolling out from mid-October 2022 through to May 2023.

Execution

HPB spoke to over 30 youths aged 15 to 24 from different races and educational levels including first jobbers on their personal experiences - from struggling with school stress, to seeking a career change not in line with their parents’ expectations, to feelings of worthlessness and more.

These stories were curated before eight were selected for public showcase.

It brought these stories to life visually using unique illustrations for each story that allowed for an easier representation of difficult moments. Each story was written in a first-person perspective and allowed the viewer an in-depth view of what he/she was struggling with.

The media strategy was designed to complement the creative rationale by bringing these real stories to life in various youth-frequented places to help to dispel the misperception that conversations about reaching out for help should only happen in clinical environments.

HPB ensured that these stories permeated both digital and real-life spaces where youths frequent, and carefully timed live dates to coincide with their schedules – such as school vicinities during school terms, shopping joints during holiday/festive periods.

These stories were developed in different formats – from static visuals for out-of-home, to audio stories and full-length video stories.

Check out the other winners here.