Request for Proposal Media Buying Agency

Top Line Objective

Girl Effect India is in the process of identifying a media agency who will shape and support the campaign idea and strategy and prepare a comprehensive media plan across all the phases of our immunization campaign. 

Who We Are 

Girl Effect is an international non-profit that builds media that girls want, trust, and need. From chatbots to chat shows and TV dramas to tech, our content helps adolescent girls in Africa and Asia make choices and changes in their lives. We create safe spaces for girls, sharing facts and answering questions about health, nutrition, education, and relationships, empowering girls with the skills to negotiate and redefine what they are told is possible “for a girl”.

Our reach is 50 million and counting. And we’re using technology to reach girls at scale so every girl can choose to be in control of her body, her health, her learning and her livelihood.

Because when a girl unlocks her power to make different choices that change her life, it inspires others to do so too. She starts a ripple effect that impacts her family, community, and country.

That’s the Girl Effect.

Our Approach

Girl Effect uses a branded media approach towards delivering behavioral change programmes.

We reach girls across the world, where they are - online and offline, to support them at the critical moments in life when choices around their health, education and economic future need to be made. 

We use our expertise in behavior change science to motivate and equip girls with information and support to help them see a different future for themselves, act on those choices, and drive greater demand for the opportunities and services available to them. 

Chhaa Jaa in India, Tujibebe in Tanzania, Yegna in Ethiopia - are some of our youth brands. They exist across multiple channels - digital ( Meta, Google and other SM platforms), TV, radio, print, and on-ground. 

Project Context

With a population of 120 million in India, adolescent girls and young women face several challenges with regards to their sexual and reproductive health. India has an important opportunity to safeguard the health of women and adolescent girls through targeted SRH interventions and through the newly planned national launch of the HPV/cervical cancer prevention vaccine. 

In 2022, India’s National Technical Advisory Group on Immunization (NTAGI) recommended introducing the HPV vaccination, also known as the cervical cancer prevention vaccine, to all eligible girls between the ages of 9-14 years under the Universal Immunisation Programme. As indicated by the Government, the communication and sensitisation of families and adolescent girls on the benefits of the cervical cancer prevention vaccine will play a key role in the success of the vaccine rollout. Along with on-ground advocacy and training, the strategy aims to include a digital component and the use of social media to reach the wider public, with a strong engagement and outreach to girls and their parents to build awareness and acceptance of the vaccine. 

Girl Effect has a strong track record supporting the HPV vaccines across Ethiopia, Malawi, Rwanda, and Tanzania in addition to experience in running routine immunisation and COVID vaccine hesitancy campaigns in India. In India, we have reached millions of adolescent girls and young women (AGYW) across the Hindi belt with content on sexual and reproductive and mental health, routine immunisation (RI), and more recently COVID vaccine hesitancy. Through our programming we have reported significant shifts in knowledge, intention, and behaviours among  AGYW to access health services.

Girl Effect is on its way to launch a multi-channel intervention that targets: girls between 9-14 years and their parents along with other key influencers. We are building on our successful social media campaigns to reach and engage girls and  parents to encourage the uptake of the HPV vaccine. 

Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer for women in India, with a majority of these cases caused by human papillomavirus (HPV). WHO’s global strategy to accelerate the elimination of cervical cancer as a public health problem proposes that 90 percent of girls should be vaccinated with the HPV vaccine by fifteen years of age. As the largest of the Commonwealth nations, India is a key member of this group who have pledged to eliminate cervical cancer by 2030. In 2022, it was reported that a new cervical cancer vaccine would be funded and distributed via state-run services to vaccinate nearly 50 million girls aged 9–14.

It becomes important to address the complex web of individual, household, community/social, and structural barriers when it comes to HPV immunisation of adolescent girls. Girl Effect aims to increase knowledge and foster positive attitudes about the HPV vaccine among girls (9-14) and their caregivers/parents. In this intervention, we will be targeting parents of girls through online channels, while simultaneously working with girls on-ground.  

Scope of work

Girl Effect India is in the process of identifying a media agency who will shape and support the campaign idea and strategy and prepare a comprehensive media plan across all the phases of our immunization campaign. 

If you work in the media industry and are passionate about unlocking the power of girls,  then we would like to work with you. 

Target Audience

Primary Audience: Mothers aged 30-45 years. [SEC C} of girls aged 9 to 14 years old in urban and peri-urban areas.

Secondary Audience: Fathers aged 30-50 years [SEC C} of girls aged 9 to 14 years old in urban and peri-urban areas.

Geographies

Hindi Speaking Belt: 

Himachal Pradesh | Uttarakhand | Uttar Pradesh |  Haryana |  Rajasthan | Madhya Pradesh | Chhattisgarh | Bihar | Jharkhand |  Chandigarh

Metros:

Delhi NCR | Mumbai | Bangalore | Kolkata | Chennai | Hyderabad | Pune | Ahmedabad | Surat

South: 

Karnataka | Tamil Nadu 

Key Objectives

1. Knowledge: Build mass awareness about cervical cancer and the importance of the HPV vaccine for adolescent girls.
2. Educate and Inform: Provide credible information about the HPV vaccine and its benefits.  Counteract any misinformation that may arise during the course of the campaign.
3. Change Attitudes: Caregivers/parents of girls express positive attitudes with regard to girls getting the cervical cancer prevention vaccine. Currently, parents have very little information on HPV, therefore fostering a positive shift in parents' attitudes towards the HPV vaccine as a preventative measure is a key, where parents and girls increasingly perceive the benefits associated with the vaccine to outweigh the perceived risks.
4. Encourage Uptake: Drive parents to make informed decisions about vaccinating their daughters that drive conversations to our chatbot/microsite.

Please Note: The campaign must reassure our audience and build trust at every stage, and must address concerns so that parents perceive the vaccines as a beneficial preventative measure.

Phase Wise Objectives

Campaign Launch Phase: Make Aware, Educate, Foster Positive Attitudes, Encourage Uptake

1. Awareness About Cervical Cancer: Raise awareness about cervical cancer with parents of girls aged 9 to 14 years. For the awareness leg of the campaign, it must resonate with mothers and fathers on an emotional level as this concerns their daughter’s health and future wellbeing. Feel free to come up with emotive, and innovative storytelling formats that will engage the audience and draw them in.
2. Awareness & Consideration For The Vaccine: Inform parents  (mothers and fathers of girls aged 9-14 years) about cervical cancer and the importance of HPV vaccination in preventing cervical cancer. This must be factual and endorsed by a key stakeholder but can be developed and executed creatively.
1. Build  urgency around the need for vaccination and its safety and benefits  by engaging stakeholders such as doctors, parents, teachers, and girls  in the awareness-building process
3.  Encourage Vaccine Uptake/Conversion:  Drive parents to make informed decisions about vaccinating their daughters and drive conversations to GE’s chatbot/microsite with functional messaging that aids conversion. 
1. Encourage parents to take action by consulting healthcare providers 
2. Point parents towards  GoI’s schedule for vaccination in their state. 
3. Direct them to the GE parent chatbot and  Chaa Jaa  HPV microsite for more information.

 Campaign Sustenance Phase: Counter  Misinformation, Reassure, and Build Trust

1. Counter Misinformation: Address potential misconceptions and misinformation about HPV vaccination through factual, credible, and trustworthy information. Direct queries towards GE’s parent chatbot that will build trust via stakeholder videos, address any misconceptions, and nudge action to sign up for the vaccine based on the Govt. Schedule.
2. Reassure & Build Trust: Continue to reassure and build trust with our audience and showcase that the benefits of the vaccine significantly outweigh the risks. 

Key Platforms: YouTube & Facebook [please feel free to add recommendations to this as per your plan but the campaign must be optimized for the mentioned platforms]

Responsibilities Include

1. Develop in-depth media strategies to reach the target audience with proper budgeting, scheduling and identification of partners.
2. Plan and deliver the project at optimum R&F levels where we see an uptick in awareness for the vaccine and GEI.
3. Plan and deliver at optimum Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) to increase the adoption of the chatbot and microsite.
4. End-to-end campaign management in the form of generating reports, analyzing reports and trends, and phasing as per agreed plans. This could change based on developments by the Government. 
5. Therefore, the agency has to be flexible enough to course-correct as and when required.
6. Implementing measurement tools to measure the campaign's effectiveness
7. Keeping a check on the overall performance, recommending best practices, and sharing industry insights which can be implemented in the long run

Expected Deliverables

The objective of the brief is to outline the importance of creating awareness and driving traffic to the chatbot and microsite for parents of girls 9-14 years of age. You are expected to deliver on the below parameters.

1. Media Strategy & Research - Craft a comprehensive media strategy rooted in research, comprising platform, channel, format mix. Recommend new media formats and digital partnerships that we can leverage to reach our target audience beyond traditional channels which have well-thought-out digital strategies which can straddle seamlessly ties in with media planning and execution. This also includes but is not limited to marking milestones, phasing the project and suggesting measurement metrics for each strategy and phase of the project.
2. Media Planning -
   1. Distil the campaign brief to identify the right partners to amplify the campaign and arrive at a schedule for optimal deliveries.
   2. Identify key audiences across platforms and derive the most cost-effective media avenues to reach them
3. Media Buying - Liaison with  media partners and negotiate competitive prices for ad spaces where our audiences are most likely to be present
4. Campaign Management -
   1.  End-to-end management and reporting of the campaign whilst ensuring that the government self-declaration certificate is uploaded with every new creative. 
   2. Ensuring timely optimizations, and A/B testing of multiple creative formats 
   3. Analyzing campaign performance and sharing meaningful insights along with solutions to meet expected performance.
   4. Sharing mid and end-campaign evals with actionable next steps
   5. Share full and complete Material Requirements which can be sent to creative agencies for their understanding. Recommend creative best practices to enhance actionability on the campaign to meet objectives.
5. Tools & Ad-tech - Leveraging data tools from internal and external sources to optimize targeting, delivery, and performance of the media campaigns in real time. Enable social listening, and deploy media studies (BLS, MMT) to enhance measurability.
6. Analytics and Reporting - Monitoring social media performance using analytics tools (e.g., Facebook Insights, Google Analytics) to track key metrics such as reach, engagement & video views etc. Make real-time adjustments & optimisations based on feedback and data. Prepare daily, weekly and monthly reports for the GEI team. Also, prepare a final campaign report at the end of the campaign with learnings and insights.
7. Best Practices - For the duration of the campaign, track the media metrics, deep-dive into the formats, emerging platform features and how best to leverage them during the campaign period.
8. Influencer Partnerships - Recommend the right influencers for the campaign through different stages with a core focus on regional popularity. Work closely with our influencer marketing agencies to execute the collaborations.

Expected Outcomes

1. Awareness: Drive reach, engagements including but not limited to likes, shares, views, comments across all of GE’s social media channels 
2. Consideration: Traffic campaigns to the microsite or social media pages that host vaccine-related content
3. Conversion: Increase uptick of the parent chatbot and microsite in terms of times quality of audiences coming to the bot and site, time spent, number of conversations completed, returning users to the microsite, action taken on the microsite

Who You Are

We are looking for agencies who have fulfilled either all or at least two of the following criteria:

• Have extensive knowledge of creating PAN India media campaigns at scale with a regional flavor.
• Developed media campaigns for the Government or the development sector
• Worked with brands targeting SEC C category; Mothers of girls aged 9-14 y.o. would be nice to have
• A portfolio of award-winning media campaigns on Facebook, YouTube, and WhatsApp will be a plus

Skills and expertise:

• You are based in India  [preferably Mumbai] and primarily work with a target audience based in different regions with specialization in Hindi speaking belt and southern states.
• Fluency in Hindi, Hinglish, and English, both written and spoken, is required for this partnership.
• Being able to troubleshoot, anticipate and course-correct on a daily, weekly, monthly basis trends &  numbers we receive from the project. 
• Ability to plan and regulate the spread of mis-information by keeping an eye on emerging search queries, videos on social media, and threads on popular social media platforms. This will help the GEI team create content to combat the misinformation within their TG which can be amplified by the media agency.
• Experience in developing health-related /Behavior change media projects in the field of Health and Immunization, Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights and Economic Empowerment would be a massive bonus.
• Project Management: Ability to effectively manage projects, coordinate teams with diverse skill sets, develop project strategies, and ensure successful execution from start to finish.
• Local Market Knowledge: Strong understanding of local trends, media landscape, and cultural nuances to tailor creative solutions that resonate with the target audience in the Indian market. 
• Time and Budget Management: Proficiency in delivering projects on schedule and within budgetary constraints, ensuring efficient allocation of resources and adherence to financial targets.
• Creative Ideation: Skill to generate innovative and unique ideas aligned with our objectives and target audience (girls and women), fostering creativity and pushing boundaries to deliver outstanding creative work.
• Strategic Thinking: Ability to analyse client goals, target audience preferences, and market trends to develop a strategic approach that drives results and provides effective creative solutions.
• Multi-platform Expertise: Proficiency in planning for diverse platforms such as social media and emerging media channels, leveraging each platform's unique features to engage the target audiences.
• Technical Proficiency: Familiarity with the latest media tools, and technologies, including programmatic buying, DAR, Google Analytics, Facebook dashboards
• Collaboration and Teamwork: Demonstrated ability to collaborate effectively with clients, creative teams, copywriters, designers, and stakeholders to bring ideas to life, fostering a collaborative and productive work environment.
• Basic safeguarding and digital safeguarding knowledge are a plus.

Expected Commitment

• The project is expected to take approximately 22 months to complete in a phase-out across different states and won’t be an always-on endeavor.
• The agency's assignment period is from October 2024-August 2026

Tentative Timelines:

•   Terms of reference published: 1st August 2024
•   Deadline for responses: 16th August 2024
•  Onboarding completion: 30th August 2024
•  Project commencement: 1st October 2024

Proposal submission

Your proposal should cover:

The Approach: Your understanding of the brief translated into your approach to the campaign. Please refer to the evaluation criteria for more details.

• Credentials: 
• Please showcase a minimum of 3 examples of previous work relevant to what we are trying to achieve and how we approach our work, and the audience that we cater to (it need not be a direct example but perhaps the closest one)
• Link to your portfolio of work
• Breakdown of Costs: 
• Detailed budget sheet with the project fee with applicable taxes and other charges clearly identified in INR. Vendors should provide their daily or hourly billing rate or their proposed fixed fee for the requested deliverables. 
• All applicable taxes should be quoted separately;

Evaluation Criteria

The criteria against which proposals will be evaluated are listed below:

Technical Evaluation

• Illustrating a comprehensive media plan where the agency understand the business goals   - 20%
• Media buying ability across all partners - 20%
• Previous work/portfolio relevant or closely relevant to the brief/TG - 10%
• Relevant experience in having done previous similar work with the Government of India - 10 %

 Financial Evaluation

• • Value for money/proposed budget breakdown - 30%

Technical and Financial proposals will need to be submitted as separate documents. Financial bids will not be opened until the technical evaluation and then only for those proposals deemed qualified and responsive.

In their Technical proposal, the bidder must demonstrate an understanding of the requirements described in the RFP and demonstrate how the bidder will meet the requirements of the evaluation criteria.

Please note that Girl Effect is not liable for any cost incurred during the award/contract preparation, submission, or negotiation of the award/contract. All submitted documentation and/or materials shall become and remain the property of Girl Effect.

VALIDITY of the proposal shall be for 90 days from the date of bid closure.

How To Apply

To apply for this opportunity, please submit a proposal by email with the subject line “ Proposal for Media Agency” to suppliers@girleffect.org and copy to devanshi.yadav@girleffect.org  by 16th August  2024.

Tax

Girl Effect is obliged by the relevant tax authorities to ensure all taxes are charged where applicable. Applicants are advised to ensure that they have a clear understanding of their tax position regarding provisions to local tax legislation when developing their proposals.

Copyright

All materials/documents arising from this consultancy work shall remain the property of Girl Effect.

Disclaimer

GE  reserves the right to determine the structure of the process, number of short-listed participants, the right to withdraw from the proposal process, the right to change this timetable at any time without notice and reserves the right to withdraw this tender at any time, without prior notice and without liability to compensate and/or reimburse any party. GE shall inform ONLY successful applicant(s). The process of negotiation and signing of the contract with the successful applicant(s) will follow. 

Please note: We will evaluate only proposals submitted following the application process outlined in the TOR and using our specified email address (suppliers@girleffect.org).

Safeguarding

You may be required to undertake safeguarding checks. Shortlisted consultants will be assessed on our organizational values at the interview stage. The successful consultant will be expected to adhere to our safeguarding policy. We encourage you to read and understand our safeguarding policy, the executive summary of which can be found Here. We have zero tolerance for all forms of violence against children, beneficiaries and staff.

Equal Opportunities

Girl Effect is committed to equal opportunity regardless of race, color, ancestry, religion, sex, national origin, sexual orientation, age, marital status, disability, gender, gender identity or expression. We are proud to be an equal opportunity workplace.

We are committed to building an organization that is increasingly representative of, and works extensively with, the communities that we serve. To this end, due regard will be paid to procuring consultancy service organizations and individuals with diverse professional, academic and cultural backgrounds.

 

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Last updated on Aug 2, 2024