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CARE Ecuador Addresses Violence Against Domestic Workers Through Ad Campaign

A group of women sit in rows of chairs in a long room. The picture is taking from behind so that only their backs and back of their heads are visible. They are each wearing a blue shirt that says

In Ecuador, paid domestic workers—women in particular— face disproportionate and persistent violence in the workplace. While violence against laborers is illegal, 80% of Ecuador’s 200,000 female domestic workers have experienced workplace violence. Harassment or violence at the workplace can including physical and sexual abuse and even rape.

To shift norms and attitudes surrounding the widespread gender-based violence (GBV) among domestic workers, CARE Ecuador, in partnership with Meta, ran a social and behavior change communication (SBCC) campaign from October to November of 2022. This six-week, digital campaign was a continuation of CARE’s global efforts to utilize social media platforms for programmatic impact.

TL;DR?

  • CARE Ecuador ran a six-week, digital campaign running ads that addressed gender-based violence experienced by domestic workers, reaching 4.2 million people in affluent and non-affluent regions of the country.
  • Of the campaign’s audience, approximately 84,600 additional people across both affluent and non-affluent regions expressed an interest in volunteering to support domestic workers experiencing violence.
  • Through the campaign, CARE Ecuador also collected over 300 emails to engage further with business owners on CARE’s Women, Dignity, and Work project, which promotes labor rights.

Creative process

To kick off the project, campaign plans drafted by the country office were coupled with insights from a social listening exercise facilitated by Meta. By better understanding the current knowledge, behavior, and attitudes towards GBV in Ecuador, the team created a range of ads that emphasized the gendered violence faced by domestic workers in Ecuador. The ads included a mix of static imagery, long videos and short 15-second vertical videos. The creatives used social norms to highlight the importance of domestic work and the respect the workers deserve. All the videos challenged the devaluation of domestic work and justification of violence toward workers.

This was the most engaged post with nearly 1000 shares.

 

This video saw the second highest reach and peak video completion rate (VCR) of 35%.

“The planning of this campaign ran smoothly due to the consolidated support and knowledge of different interdisciplinary teams,” commented Tania Gomez, a Communication Officer at CARE Ecuador. “With the collaboration of CARE USA’s team, Meta’s consulting, the technical area of the Inclusive and Intercultural Societies Program, and CARE Ecuador’s Communication team, we overcame challenges such as distance, time and language barriers to innovate together.”

Some communication results from the campaign included:

  • Had a very high video completion rate (VCR) of 17.1%, primarily driven by the shorter videos. These featured static images in video format with facts about GBV and paid domestic workers in Ecuador.
  • Both affluent and non-affluent populations had similar, overall engagement rates that exceeded benchmarks. However, affluent audiences were 42% more likely to watch the videos for longer periods (19% vs. 11% video completion rate). And, non-affluent audiences were 29% more likely to share the ads.
  • Utilizing Meta’s Lead Gen ad format and the platform’s targeting capabilities, CARE Ecuador collected over 300 email addresses of business owners interested in learning more about labor rights.

Results

With support from Meta, CARE Ecuador’s ad campaign reached 4.2 million individuals across the country. To gauge how successful the campaign was in changing knowledge, attitudes, and behavior, Meta facilitated a brand lift study where both people exposed and unexposed to the ads were asked:

  1. Ad Recall: Do you recall seeing an ad from CARE Ecuador online or on a mobile device in the past two days?
  2. How interested would you be in volunteering to support paid domestic workers experiencing violence?
  3. How important do you think it is to protect the rights of paid domestic workers in Ecuador?
  4. How much do you agree with this statement, “Gender violence against paid domestic workers is a problem in Ecuador”?

The brand lift study further targeted testing between affluent and non-affluent regions within Ecuador to assess if there was a difference in attitudes and learning. The main results included:

  • The volunteering question yielded significant lift of 2.2 and 1.5 points among affluent and non-affluent populations respectively. This means that of the affluent population, it is likely that 68,600 additional people expressed interest in volunteering to support domestic workers experiencing GBV. Of the non-affluent population, this number was 16,000.
  • The positive lift in the volunteering question indicates the campaign was successful in driving intent to take action among those who saw CARE Ecuador’s ads.
  • Both of the other questions asked during the BLS did not result in significant lift, however this may be due to pre-existing high baselines. Essentially, a majority of the audiences already believed in the desired answers. These high baselines, while surprising, are corroborated in findings from a separate survey conducted by Meta in partnership with CARE and others.

What’s next?

CARE Ecuador has launched a second phase of the campaign to understand the number of times people need to see a message in order to make a behavior change.

The team also plans to continue raising awareness about labor rights and GBV in the workplace by engaging with business owners whose emails CARE Ecuador was able to collect through the campaign.

In addition to continued programmatic work around GBV through the Women, Dignity, and Work project, the team is taking these learnings and applying them to other programmatic efforts.

“We have conducted two behavior change campaigns, thanks to the support of CARE USA and Meta,” said Jhoanna Abad, Communication Officer for CARE Ecuador. “As a team we have great expectations to continue measuring and improving the impact of our communication campaigns. The most short-term goal is to launch a holistic campaign to raise awareness and change behavior in xenophobia prevention.

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