STRATEGIC COMMUNICATION PLAN

DON’T REVEAL THE SECRETS ONLINE

1. Executive summary

Don’t reveal the secrets online is a social campaign aiming to raise awareness and advocacy from all Vietnamese Internet users, primarily 16 – 24 years old about the online privacy rights. Phase 1 of the campaign was executed for 1 month of May and June 2020, however, the impact was low.

In this planning for phase 2, we want to make the campaign more interesting, less educational, more fun and interactive to the T.A but the assets must still convey the message of the campaign:

• Stage 1: We create a big boom on social media, with a social debates lead by our outreach partners (KOLs, communities page, individual and organization recruited from phase 1).
• Stage 2: We motivate the youths to join the debate and share their experience regarding violating or being violated on the online privacy rights
• Stage 3: From the stories that we generated (crowd sourcing) from our partners as well as our T.A followers, we maintain the campaign’s spirit by distributing some notable quotes and confessions by the participants.

2. Background

“Don’t reveal the secrets online” is a campaign created by credible organisations including Oxfam Vietnam, Institute for Policy Research and Development of Communication (IPS), Vietnet Information and Communications Technology Center (Vietnet-ICT) under the sponsorship of the European Union to raise awareness and recruiting the Vietnamese youths, primarily 16 – 24 year-old, regarding online privacy rights.

Phase 1 of the campaign happened during 23/05/2020 to 14/06/2020. It has gained certain successes regarding attracting individual and organization ambassadors relevant to the T.A who are high school and university students. The official channels of the campaign (websites, Facebook) and the ambassadors has distributed some educational content about rights and legal issues of online privacy. However, the brand team indicated that the impact failed to meet the expectation due to be executed in a short time.

This strategic communication plan is dedicated for phase 2 of the campaign. This phase runs from October to December 2020 to reinforce the campaign message as well as optimizing and amplifying the influence of individual and organization ambassadors recruited from phase 1, with social media as the key channel.

3. Research

Statista (2019) reports that young people from 15 – 24 years old is the second biggest Internet user group: it is estimated that 13.6 million (23% of total Internet users) users are in this age. Key cities have the biggest active users at this age, and 99% of the T.A are digitally active on a daily basis with accessing social media is their most favorite activity online (GroupM 2018). DecisionLab (2015) reports that Gen Z’s interactions on social media (like, comment, share, post) is motivated by the needs of recognisation and connecting with the community.

However, internet users, especially the young group one, is smart, confident yet vulnerable on the internet. Barbara Ortutay (2010) stated that although the young people do care about their privacy on the internet that they do not want to share their private information to business and online platform, they have little or no knowledge about their rights to protect themselves on the internet. Furthermore, in a chaos internet space, internet users are lost in terms and conditions with hidden or complicated contents.

Figure 1: Percentage of the internet users from 15 – 24 year-old (adapted from Statista 2019)

4. Strategy, goals, objectives

a) Communication objectives

We received a brief with 2 goals:

• Young internet users to know about and demonstrate good practices of Internet privacy
• Social organizations to promote online privacy.

However, since our key target are the young Internet users, the objectives is set to active the awareness and participation among the mass individuals, who are willing to take actions regarding social issue. Then, with this crowd power, we turn each of the advocators into an amplifier that triggers social organisations to pay more attention and contribute their action to solve this problem. The objectives proposed below is expected to achieve within 3 months of the campaign duration (October – December):

• Informational: To make 500 000 of potential T.A aware of online privacy rights and the consequences of failing to follow the guidance.
• Attitudinal: To make 20 000 of aware T.A express positive and supportive attitude towards the campaign and online privacy rights.
• Behavioural: To recruit 100 of aware T.A to participate with the campaign’s activities.

b) Strategy approach

Our approach is simple: creating an edu-tainment (education + entertainment) playground where Gen Z converse, play and learn. Gen Z have enough lessons at school, they don’t need more when hanging out on digital.

We, the adults, think of the digital world as being complex and full of crimes, but Gen Z see it as their second life: they are willing to take in and share anything to the world (Gyan P. Y. and Jyotsna R. 2017). Regardless whose information it is. Sharing and reacting to a new information is an inevitable part of their “life”, it is how they network and get the recognition from their friends and communities on digital (DecisionLab 2015), yet they fail to realise of the consequences. We uncovered the truth: the urge to be recognized and connect drives our T.A to the unconscious action of sharing their or others’ secrets.

It turns out that ignorance is not the nature of gen Z! When it comes to social issues, they take it serious and are willing to make a change for the better (DecisionLab 2015). Our operation should focus on raising and maximising the awareness regarding online privacy, then, driving the T.A’s advocacy would be more potential yet requires less investment (money and time!).

The new creative concept we propose is Lỡ gì thì lỡ, đừng lỡ lời! (Don’ slip a secret online, ever!). With this concept, we aim to deliver the key message that an action that violating the online privacy rights, with or without being conscious, is a big ‘no no’ and can lead to significant consequences.

Communication pathway

Communication pathway of Phase 2

Due to the limitation of the budget comparing to the length of the campaign (6000 Euro for 3 months). We decide that it is necessary to only concentrate on the key channels that established the trustworthiness of the campaigns as well as optimizing reach to the right target.

Figure 3: Gen Z’s preference of communication style (adapted from Francis & Hoefel 2018)

To align with the preference of our T.A, the campaign must follow the key values: TRUTH and CONVERSATION. The campaign’s official channels (controlled media) still play the role as providing education-centric content. Cruz (2016) mentioned that the word-of-mouth (WOM) tactics can influence Gen Z’s attitude and decision. Thus, interactive media, including a KOL, community pages, individual and organization ambassadors, effectively contribute to generate natural, relatable and real conversations to persuade and call our T.A to action.

5. Tactics, budgets and resources (800- 850 words)

a. Tactics

The social media today is oversaturated with fake news, scandals, made up stories. The digital savvy generations of Gen Z is also more skeptical than ever (DecisionLab 2015). We know that, and we want to drive their attention by delivering stories from real people, in the most shocking, entertaining – somewhat humorous, but still genuine than ever! We ultilise the crowd-sourcing stories through a clear divination of the campaign timeline into 3 stages.

Stage 1: Warm up

Before going deep in the educational aspects about the knowledge of online privacy situations, rights and legal aspects and expecting the T.A to listen to us, we need to make the T.A feel relevant. We want to make a big boom by bombarding social media with genuine stories by the KOLs, ambassadors and community pages regarding online privacy issues. We invite them to share their personal experience and feelings when being exposed or be the one who had exposed someone’s secrets online without knowing the consequences (who have never been in this situation?). Whether these people belong to #TeamBíMật (#OopsISlippedIt) or #TeamBậtMí (#GotExposed), they will lead and raise a social debate between both teams and draw the attention from the public to the consequences. PR acts as a channel to recap to the T.A and highlights the key debate and opinions with the hook of the macro KOL’s story.

Figure 3: Reference of social debate from Phase 1 (from brief)
*Content to be changed in accordance to the direction of Phase 2

Rather than giving educational information, this stage is mainly about showcasing the shocking situations. The KOLs, community pages, ambassadors should express the consequences of all levels, from big to small, in order to raise awareness that even a smallest act, with or without conscious, can drag themselves and others into mental and legal troubles.

Stage 2: Engagement

While the debate keeps going on, the campaign official channels distribute educational content regarding this issue and an engaging activity amplified by KOLs, community pages and ambassadors. Adapting from the stage 1’s debates, we and KOLs, community pages and ambassadors will recruit their followers to join either #TeamBíMật (#OopsISlippedIt) or #TeamBậtMí (#GotExposed). The participants are allowed to either talk about their own experience or share their opinions, tips for other readers on this issue while attaching the campaign hashtag, a link to our Facebook page as well as changing their profile picture using our campaign frame. They are freely to choose the formats to express: vlog, posts, photo/ image…All participants who contribute in this activity with a positive attitude will receive an online certification to recognize for their effort. This certification is provided by us, who are trusted international and local organisations, which is useful especially to promote the students planning for studying aboard, getting in NGO/ CSO… Since it is in the online form – it helps to minimize the printing fee.

However, we need take these conversations to the next levels. Social media owns a great power of triggering content sharing due to its anonymity, so why don’t we take advantage of this behaviour? (Zhang & Kizilcec 2014). Our conversation must stay relevant to the T.A’s life as much as possible. From what we have observed, we found that many schools have a confession page on Facebook run by the students themselves, and Gen Z share everything on it (anonymously): student life, personal life, break up, friendship problems, gossips (figure 4). Our in house media team will frequently follow these pages to identify the signs of violating online privacy rights, then directly comment about that particular case in the comment section regarding the online privacy policies. This considers as a real-time seeding tactic to ignite the discuss and educate the right T.A, through the illustration of a real example.

Figure 4: Confession pages run by students (adapted from Facebook 2020)

Stage 3: Amplify

In stage 1 and 2, we have made our partners ignite a great social debate, we have invited the T.A to engage with us, to express their opinions and to learn about the message. In stage 3, our ambition is keep the debate and the spirit continue. Through stage 1 and stage 2, we have crowd sourced many real and genuine stories everywhere submitting to us, this supplies a valuable source of content materials to distribute until the end of the campaign. We will turn these stories into quotes and confessions for the always on content on our pages, and use them as an truthful, persuasive example to demonstrate our educational content. In addition, it triggers the T.A to engage with the content.

b. Resources planning

c. Budget planning

6. Evaluation

To guarantee that the campaign will achieve the expected outcome, the number to evaluate will follow the propose objectives:

• Informational: Reach at least 300 000 of potential T.A regarding of online privacy rights and the consequences of failing to follow the guidance.
• Attitudinal: Receive at least 10 000 positive reactions of the T.A on social media (like and react, comment, share)
• Behavioural: Get at least 50 entries from the T.A through the engaging activity

The following tools will be used to measure to guarantee that the numbers of the report are true and trackable by each stage of the campaign:

• Facebook page management tool (on the official pages (Facebook, website), community and ambassadors’ page/ account, KOL’s account)
• Monthly social listening
• Partners’ tracking tool (PR partner)