Small tourism businesses in ASEAN countries often lack the skills to get their business going. Working with ILO, we came up with a playful video concept that outlines the training benefits in less than 5 minutes, and tested the finished product with people in the business to make sure our key messages were getting through.

Context ​As tourism grows in Southeast Asia, so does the number of people jumping into the industry -- including individuals with limited means and skills to properly capitalize on the trend. To give these people a higher chance of succeeding, ILO put together a training curriculum that helps tour organizers, guesthouse owners and craftspeople get organized logistically and financially. What was still missing was a video to introduce the curriculum so that people would want to delve deeper.

Approach The brief from the ILO was straightforward. Coming up with a storyline that would resonate with the target audience was a little less so. Individuals who are getting started with smallscale tourism businesses have little time to spare as they juggle other responsibilities and often do not have staff to delegate the work to. They can also be wary of outside assistance. So we asked ILO to give us the reasons why their target market might not want to follow their training material, and then proceeded to identify counter arguments that we worked into the script and storyboard.

Impact ​As we closed in on the completion of the video animation, we organized a test screening in Bali (one of the ILO's project sites) to gauge whether our messages were getting through. For the most part, the responses we received confirmed that we were on track - and that viewers were getting the stated benefits presented in the video.

The animation that was made was excellent, surpassed the initial expectation of the ILO.

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