2024 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Adopting an anglicized name is a common practice for Asian Canadians. But instead of making things easier for them, emotional wellbeing suffers, often accompanied by a loss of identity. Seeing a red underline marking your name as a typo is just one example of the softwares they use saying: If you’re Asian, you don’t belong. Now it was Elimin8Hate’s time to step in and show action and support for Asian Canadians by normalizing their names, one dictionary at a time.

Since COVID-19, Asian hate has skyrocketed (up 700% in Vancouver alone), yet it flies under the radar. Name changing isn’t questioned, and the microaggression that it symbolizes isn’t on their collective radar. As a society, we’re not as obsessed with inclusivity as we say we are.

When names are changed, they prioritize linguistic comfort over the identity of the person making the change. It’s easier to tear down pride than build it up. It was time to end this microaggression… Leaning into these insights, they started the simplest, and most obvious way they knew how — by building a custom dictionary with Microsoft, the most popular productivity software in the world today.

This strategy made the action of seeing you, your family’s, your friends’, etc. Asian names without a red underline something real and tangible, to make sure that all Asian Canadians know they belong and that their names are not mistakes.

In partnership with Elimin8Hate, the agency created a first-of-its kind campaign to combat name discrimination and empower Asian Canadians to reclaim their non-Anglicized names.

To start, they developed the world’s first custom dictionary of Asian names — a free .dic file in Microsoft Word containing more than 8,000 unique monikers from over a dozen countries. Asian Canadians were then encouraged to visit the campaign website, namereclaim.ca., to download the .dic file and add their own names to the dictionary to further expand the existing databank.

To better understand the emotional impact this issue was having on real members of the Asian-Canadian community, they interviewed several Asian Canadians who personally experienced name discrimination. They then recorded their real-time reactions to seeing the red underline disappear from their name after downloading the dictionary. These powerful emotional responses were incorporated into a testimonial video which appeared on the campaign website and in
YouTube pre-roll ads.

The campaign was further amplified through a mix of paid and earned tactics. Paid tactics included out-of-home ads (wild postings and transit shelter ads were placed in various high traffic locations throughout Toronto and Vancouver) while earned tactics included strategic media relations with Elimin8Hate spokespeople and seeding personalized campaign t-shirts to influential Asian Canadians such as politicians, entrepreneurs, actors, musicians, athletes, etc.

They’re hopeful that the media attention and public support they generated from #ReclaimYourName encourages Microsoft, and other organizations, to consider how their technology can better support inclusivity.

They earned media placements appeared in print, online, broadcast, and radio. Top placements included Breakfast Television, CBC Radio One, Global News, CP24, City News, CKNW The Jas Johal Show, and Black Press Media which generated 68 syndications across British Columbia. Organic press release pick-up appeared in a number of outlets, including Yahoo News.

They had 208 placements generating more than 91 million impressions with 137 pieces of traditional coverage and 71 pieces of social media coverage.

On social media, they received support from several influential Asian Canadians, including Star Trek Actor Hiro Kanagawa, TikTok mega star Tiana Shern, and Top Chef Canada host Mijune Pak. They secured 14 media interviews for their spokespeople across both national and regional media outlets and 100% of coverage was positive in tone, with 100% key message penetration, including mentions of the website.

NameReclaim.ca secured more than 10 thousands website impressions. Hundreds of direct dictionary downloads. 15% dictionary download rate.Microsoft has since caught wind of their campaign and is exploring opportunities to implement
it into their English dictionary.

Credits

Agency: Citizen Relations
CCO: Josh Budd
CD, Art Director: Mike Lo Nam
CD, Writer: Abeer Verma
SVP, Strategy: Lindsay Page
Director, Strategic Communications: Rebecca Myers
Vice President: Cher Lee
Account Director: Kristen Schaffrath
Sr. Account Manager: Jonathan Kim
Sr. Account Executive: Christina Demare, Daniel Ma
Account Executive: Katie Haller, Chantal Grainger
Production Designer: Antony Micheal Melven
Managing Partner: Brooke Leland, Jungle Media
Media Buying Assistant: Evann Kremer, Jungle Media
Web Developer: Oliver Morrissey
Director/Photographer: Nick Wong
Editor: Andy Ferreira
Sound: Boombox