For the first time in its history the World Health Organisation (WHO) has recently asked for help to combat the Covid-19 virus. At the end of March they issued a global creative brief to turn public health issues into engaging and informative messages, across multiple languages and cultures.
They distilled the issue into six key areas: personal hygiene, physical distancing, knowing the symptoms, kindness, myth-busting, and doing more & donating.
Our response centres on myth-busting. Nearly every day a new rumour or conspiracy theory spreads through social media – whether it be the belief that drinking alcohol or taking a hot bath will kill the virus. Or more recently, blaming it all on 5G wireless technology.
We felt that Covid-19 is an invisible, misunderstood killer, and to run a campaign to stop it, we need to ‘see’ it. But all the imagery so far is of computer simulated ‘science’ imagery.
Our idea is to give the virus a personality. To make it green and a bit ‘nasty’. Once it has a character, we can explain what it does and what it doesn’t – and how we can stop it.
By using illustration and gentle humour we can show the virus in many situations, whilst also getting serious messages across.
We can also simplify the shape into a ‘stop’ sign that can carry many different call-to-actions, in multiple languages.
Here are some examples of the idea in action.
And how it can adapt it into other languages.
As our development continued, we realised that the idea would also carry over into other key areas of their brief, such as personal hygiene…
If you want to see our full campaign, you’ll find it here.
We wait to see if the WHO are interested, and want to take it further. We’ll keep you posted.
Additional illustration: Perry Rowe