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May 2020 Edition of Hallo, Halle! – Speak Up Through Your Campaign!
- June 23, 2020
- Posted by: admin
- Category: News
May 2020 Edition of Hallo, Halle! – Speak Up Through Your Campaign!
Have you ever been thinking about how to go about starting a social campaign be it on your own initiative or on behalf of a community you engage with? For the May edition of Hallo, Halle!, Wisma Jerman invited Vania Santoso as a speaker. Vania is well known for her environmental activism throughout Indonesia.
Already at a very young age Vania Santoso started caring about environmental issues around her. Social projects initiated by herself have already brought her to various parts of the world. One of her successfully implemented social projects is the fashion label HeySTARTIC. Starting with bags made from used cement sacks, Vania introduced a strong social campaign with the aim to bring environmental issues to the attention of the society.
However, the campaign wasn’t successful right from the start. Vania had to overcome several challenges before she could see the fruits of her efforts and dedication. At Hallo, Halle she explained how she utilized Design Thinking techniques for her social campaign to become a success. According to her, Design Thinking is a method for practical and creative problem-solving which consists of a five stage process, i. e. Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.
When using Design Thinking one has to be sensitive towards the targeted audience in order to fully understand its needs. As Vania explained during Hallo, Halle!, there is a variety of recycled products that has the potential to draw the interest of buyers, however due to the perception of products made from recycled materials they then decide against buying and using these kind of products. In order to avoid failure, Vania conducted comprehensive market surveys among her targeted customers which brought her to the conclusion that there is high demand for quality leather products.
However, instead of using traditional leather materials made from animal skin, Vania and her sister developed a material similar to leather from used cement sacks. In order to successfully penetrate the market with her innovative products another step was necessary. Vania explained that in order to win over potential customers she had to “speak to them with their language”, meaning applying social and marketing campaigns that can be understood by the target audience. In the end with her products and the accompanying campaigns she succeeded in educating the users of her products about the importance of caring about the environment.