The story behind the world’s first voice petition
Like all great stories, malaria is a tale of villains (the mosquitoes that carry the deadly parasite), heroes (from researchers to funders), tragedy (the billions of lives lost) and happy endings (knowing that we will defeat it).
We’ve seen tremendous progress, with seven million lives saved since 2000. But in November 2017 there was a major twist in the tale. Funding and political attention had dwindled causing progress to stall and risk being reversed. We needed to act, and fast. So in February 2018, David Beckham fronted the launch of Malaria Must Die, a global white label campaign that set out to reframe public perceptions of malaria and inspire political and private sector action.
The campaign laid the groundwork for the Malaria Summit held in April 2018 during the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting in London when 53 leaders made a commitment to halve malaria by 2023. If delivered, this will save the lives of 650,000 people and protect 350 million more, mainly young children.
Cut to 2019 our aim is to sustain the campaign momentum and find an authentic way to unite a wide range of voices in a powerful way, to drive the conversation and demonstrate a strong, palpable demand for action. With this being the age of the voice, where smart speakers and voice recognition devices are becoming part of our everyday lives, Malaria Must Die is taking the humble petition into the 21st century with the world’s first voice petition to end malaria.
We wanted to gather, hear and amplify the voices of those affected by malaria; those global household names who are part of the fight to end malaria; those on the front line; those at home who care; businesses who are helping lead the charge; leaders who have stepped up to the plate and micro-influencers.
The Malaria Must Die Voice Petition launched on 9th April via a short film, produced by Ridley Scott Associates, where David Beckham appears to speak nine languages. But the voices are not all his own. Instead, using emerging AI video synthesis technology, we hear David speaking the voices of men and women from around the world, including malaria survivors.
The petition will capture a breadth of voices – geographically and across sectors. These collective voices will be packaged to create a malaria “roar” and used in a variety of ways, critically at a series of global and political moments in 2019 including the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria replenishment in October where we want to grab the attention of leaders in a unique and memorable way.
Our media strategy for the campaign focused on online and broadcast coverage, ensuring that people saw the film and were directed to join the petition. We had complementary spokespeople, from the malaria survivors whose voices featured in the film, to Malaria No More UK supporters with powerful personal stories and experts who could speak about technical aspects of the disease. This enabled us to place opportunities over 18-hour period, from Sky Sunrise to evening radio. We have no advertising budget but thanks to our partnership with Dentsu Aegis Network we are fortunate to receive pro bono advertising and agency support.
As this was a global campaign we also worked with partners around the world to secure international coverage and saw online, print and broadcast coverage in key strategic markets including US, India, France, Nigeria and South Africa. A critical component of the communications strategy was social media and we were able to reach a large global audience thanks to the film and petition being promoted on David Beckham’s channels and those of other high-profile supporters and organisations. So far, the media coverage has created 44 million opportunities to see the campaign, with over 500 pieces of coverage, digital impressions have reached over 416 million, and video views are over 2.6 million. The campaign will continue to build with several moments planned in the next six months to inspire further sign ups for action.
This article has been written by Vicky Gashe, Head of Comms at Malaria No More UK
