Yellow Octopus was brought into the picture as a messaging partner tasked with taking over 700 evidence-based tips and their supporting core findings from Temasek Foundation’s research partner, SEED Institute, and adapting them for public consumption through digital and social media channels.
After years of championing projects for at-risk youth as the philanthropic arm of state sovereign fund Temasek Holdings, Temasek Foundation decided to take their work in the community upstream through a national parenting movement in 2019.
The big idea was to educate and raise a generation of parents and caregivers confident in creating a nurturing environment for early childhood development, in hopes of setting the stage for a successful future for their children.
"My WiseJourney has been a great source of information with the research-backed tips from the panel of experts. I also found it to be a useful pillar of support as being in a community has provided me with helpful perspectives on challenges we commonly encounter in parenthood."
Nicholas, father to a 5-month-old girl (Participant in WiseSpeak Infants)
Phase I
Design Research Before Communications Strategy
As seasoned communicators, our instinct was to carefully do our groundwork before assuming the task of starting a national movement, and at a depth we had never explored before. So instead of delving headlong into content creation and strategy, we set ourselves the challenge of immersing ourselves in the study of parenting through design thinking and research.
WHAT DESIGN RESEARCH IS
While traditional market research may look at demographic factors of a target audience (age, gender, and socio-economic status), design research is an approach where designers immerse themselves in the lives of the people they are designing for, learn from their lived experiences, and co-create solutions with them. Through ethnographic engagements, including focus groups and in-depth interviews, we developed a deep empathy for parents and uncovered opportunities for innovation that would effectively meet real needs, not just hypothetical ones.
Where were parents getting their parenting tips from? How did they decide who to trust on advice? Would a purely digital distribution strategy of tips actually reach and educate the desired audience?
Armed with these questions and more, we put our ears to the ground and gathered data from a total of 29 parents and a social worker.
Several months of data collection was followed by a rigorous data analysis process to cluster the data into themes and to distill the human insights and design principles that would inform our content and distribution strategies downstream.
In addition to these findings, we also created archetypes of our target audience segments covering both psychographic and behavioral aspects, such as their needs, values and goals.
Also known as personas, these archetypes capture a rich portrait of families and guide the design team in their creative translation of content into something that will speak to the hearts of Singaporeans, thereby increasing adoption and application of ParentWise tips to family life.
We also made a notable discovery on the concentric circles of “village” influence surrounding parents, which brought us to the insight that we had to engage more than just parents on this journey of raising caregivers and advocates for parental support.
PHASE II
Refining The Brief For Maximum Impact
With our new research insights, we proposed a refinement of Temasek Foundation's Theory of Change or how they were expecting to achieve their goals and effect national change.
The pivotal change was inspired by the idea of the “village” when it came to parental education – that it was more effective for facilitated “micro-communities” or small groups of parenting professionals, parents, and caregivers alike to disseminate and model knowledge and tips, as opposed to simply putting the information online in a sea of other resources and voices.
PHASE III
Taking the ParentWise Universe To The World
With that, we developed a multi-touchpoint communications strategy with 3 main pillars.
(1) Building Awareness Through "Lived Experiences"
(2) Building Shared Experiences Through Micro-communities
(3) Building Partnerships Through The Bigger Village Supporting Parents
(1) Building Awareness Through "Lived Experiences"
We did this by building the following digital touchpoints:
(a) A ParentWise website holding both a repository of the tips and respective core findings.
(b) An editorial segment of “voices from the village” that included parents and early childhood experts alike, with stories shared weekly on the ParentWise Facebook page.
(c) Social media content that adapted tips and editorial stories into bite-sized information relevant for the platforms like Instagram.
(d) Filming 4 brand videos that communicate the ParentWise vision, beliefs and values – released through our social media platforms.
(2) Building Shared Experiences Through Micro-communities
We created “WiseJourneys” – sessions specially crafted using SEED Institute’s evidence-based tips and findings, which were shared with parents through a 4-week programme.
By gathering parents into small groups, WiseJourneys harness the power of collective learning and problem-solving amongst parents and caregivers journeying together. Parents engaged in hands-on activities with their children, self-reflection on their parenting, and authentic sharing of personal experiences and tips with the group.
Beyond absorbing information, we wanted to help parents discover purpose and joy amidst the sometimes messy parenting journey and see the importance of having a village of support to lean on.
The structure and philosophy of WiseJourneys represents an important shift from top-down, one-way “classroom” education, towards the principles of andragogy (adult education), which leverage adult learners’ intrinsic motivation and provide them with opportunities to problem solve and apply their learning in their own lives.
In addition to developing educational content and activities to provide parents with an engaging and interactive learning journey, here’s how we took our first steps:
• Actively recruited participants via our social media channels and established partnerships with various preschools and social service agencies with a network of parents
• Created handbooks and play-kits to enrich participants’ learning
• Produced 12 educational videos that communicate the ParentWise tips and encourage mindful parenting to reinforce the principles and tips shared in each of the 3 unique WiseJourney programmes on offer
• Trained facilitators in carrying the heart of ParentWise in their sessions with parents
(3) Building Partnerships Through The Bigger Village Supporting Parents
This was done by nurturing partnerships through:
- Getting parents and experts to contribute stories and lessons in the form of articles to be published on SuperHonestly, our editorial platform
- Working with external partners such as Prudential Singapore to share our content on their own platforms
Parenting a Nation's Parents
Over a two year period, we spent almost half a year dedicated to design research, and another half refining our strategy and executing it piece by piece with our media partners, from the website and social media assets to the WiseJourney curriculum and videos.
In January 2021, we launched the ParentWise site, complete with a heavy-duty tip repository and articles written and edited in-house as well as contributed by experts and parents. Social media platforms were brought live and populated.
WiseJourneys were officially launched a few months later, although several trial sessions had already been run during the research phase. Together with SEED, we piloted 38 WiseJourney groups for over 250 parents across 5 months.
As of December 2021, TF’s evidence-based tips and core findings have been adapted into over 130 Instagram posts and 78 editorial stories, and have garnered about 2,000 followers on social media platforms, with a combined reach of over 200,000.