Outsmarting epidemics

Epidemics are among the greatest threats to global health and prosperity. Yet recent crises have exposed fundamental weaknesses in our ability to prevent and respond to epidemic diseases. We created a global campaign in partnership with the Wellcome Trust to launch CEPI (the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness) and encourage the global elite to invest in vaccines that combat emerging diseases.

A defeatable threat

We led with a video campaign to grant serious social currency to an initiative actually aimed at the small group of world leaders gathering at Davos. Keeping our tone positive and thought-provoking, we created ‘Let’s #OutsmartEpidemics’ – a campaign wrapper that reflects the great achievements of our past and shows a solution in coming together. The title establishes our aim, makes the urgency clear and underlines R&D as critical to victory.

A collective effort

The video premiered live on stage at Davos. It was also directly served to attendees via # and twitter group targeting, and a specially constructed audience of 13m ‘global health interested’ across 12 countries were reached through paid social. Ahead of launch, we reached out to a number of ‘super influencers’ including leading scientists Max Roser, Jon Foley and Mark Lynas for their support in sharing the video too. 204 media articles were generated across 32 major territories, including international top-tier publications including BBC, FT, NY Times, Nikkei and Allgemeine.

Our targeted approach got the message in front of the right people to ensure decision makers took note.