The second part of the “We are alike” campaign, which ECOM launched in mid-August of this year, finished with some amazing results: 14,000 comments, 37,000 reposts and 5 million views!
In total, 20 unique videos were released during the second part of ECOM’s campaign. However, the real win was getting the audience’s attention. On TikTok, our videos were viewed by over 3.2 million individual viewers and received an impressive 5 million views!
The overwhelming leader in views was the clip on “Uncomfortable questions for trans people.”

How everything started

Over the past few years, ECOM has been actively working to debunk stereotypes and prejudices associated with transgenderness. This is why we decided to create a platform to support and increase the visibility of the trans community in the region of Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Our “We are alike” TikTok campaign has become such a platform.
As a reminder, the first part of the “We are alike” campaign was also quite successful. We released 33 videos and gathered almost a million views.

“Continuing the “We Are Alike” media campaign turned out to be a natural and important step for us. Initially, we planned for the campaign to have two parts, but made a final decision on the importance of continuing the campaign after completing the first part. We noticed that despite the fact that there were no new videos on our TikTok account for almost a year, the number of views continued to grow. This showed us that there is a huge demand for content created by transgender people. Society in our region lacks information and open dialogue on this topic,” says Tina Sobko, ECOM’s Communications Officer.

What is the secret of the success of the second part of the “We are alike” campaign? 

The second cycle of the “We are alike” campaign has a number of unique features and innovations that distinguish it from the first part of the campaign. In particular:
1. Voices of the trans community: 

“This year we filmed campaign videos in four different countries: Armenia, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. We were also able to involve people from Ukraine and Belarus to participate in the filming. Therefore, we significantly expanded the geographical coverage of the second part of the campaign, which gave the public the opportunity to hear the voices of trans people from different countries in the EECA region.
An important difference is that in this cycle of the campaign, educational videos were created by transgender people themselves, and not by medical experts, as in the first part. The fact that it is representatives of the trans community themselves who explain in detail complex terms and processes in our videos helps them connect much better with the viewer, and the information itself is more understandable to the audience,” says Amir Mukambetov, Coordinator of ECOM’s advocacy and the “Trans*Map in EECA” project.

2. In-depth personal stories of trans people:
This time, ECOM focused on delving deeper into the personal stories of trans people, and how they live and feel, in order to help viewers better understand the complexities of being transgender and the challenges trans people face in the EECA region.

3 most popular clips of the second part of the campaign 

1.5 million views

709,000 views

584,000 views

“The importance of this campaign for the EECA region is that it helps increase the visibility of trans people while emphasizing kindness and diversity. We set out to showcase the diversity of experiences and lives of different trans people in a setting that everyone can relate to. The notion of support was an important component, and we noticed that the comments left by trans people under our videos noted the importance of seeing representatives of their country and feeling solidarity and support from the community. This campaign created a space where every trans person can feel that they are not alone, and that their story and experiences have value and are important to others”, summed up Suleyma Kelgembaeva, ECOM’s Advocacy Officer.