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In June 2011 this year world leaders had four hours to save four million children’s lives at the global vaccination summit hosted by David Cameron in London on June 13th 2011.
#Passiton was designed to create unprecedented noise around the importance of and lack of funding for vaccines. The idea was to put immense pressure on David Cameron so the UK pledged enough money, and to ensure that he also passed the message onto other world leaders.
I took three of the UKs most high-profile (and utterly brilliant) blogging and vlogging mums from the UK to follow the journey of a vaccine (on Twitter @Mr Vaccine) in Mozambique. They were: blogger Christine Mosler, political blogger Tracey Cheetham and You Tuber Lindsay Atkin.
The project has been shortlisted for a 2011 Social Buzz Award (announced in December – wish us luck!).
Lindsay Atkin’s first film to introduce #Passiton to her audience.
The journey started in the warehouse in the capitol, Maputo, they then travelled to a district health clinic before jumping on the back of motorbikes with the healthworkers and heading for a rural clinic under a tree where it was given to a child by one of Save the Children’s roving health workers in a health clinic under a tree.
We achieved a 27 million reach on twitter, over 200,000 YouTube views, hundreds of bloggers blogging both in the UK and internationally. And scores of school children blogged up and down the country.
Celebrities including Stephen Fry, Jamie Oliver, Jon Snow, Christy Turlington and Mylene Klass tweeted their support.
Our bloggers/vloggers met both Bill Gates and Andrew Mitchell, Secretary of State for International development, to talk about the project.
We also secured significant national and regional media coverage including Daybreak and the Politics Show.
Another key element to the project were our partnerships with GAVI (Global Alliance for Vaccines and Imunisation) The Gates Foundation and also DFID.
Support from the online community was staggering as scores of people came up with their own ideas of how to support the project – and many joined and hosted Twitter parties, twitter quizzes, memes, and followed the live blogging action from the field.
But best of all we achieved our goal as $4.3 billion was pledged for vaccines by global leaders.
Detail and strategy
#Passiton demonstrated how telling stories in real time from the frontline can engage people using social media, starting a groundswell of interest that will then push the campaign out into national mainstream broadcast and print.
We not only gave a voice to the healthcare workers and mums in Mozambique that we met, we also demonstrated the importance of vaccines and how they can help put an end to 8.1 million children dying every year from things like pneumonia and diarrhoea.
Keeping vaccinations cold under the blistering Mozambique sun and delivering them to places accessible only by foot or motorbike are just some of the many challenges our health workers face.
They do it day after day because vaccines are vital and save millions of lives every year.
Mums all over the world have hopes, fears and dreams for their children – so who better to tell the story? From three different niches, politics, parent blogging and YouTube, our bloggers/vlogger meet mums, children and healthworkers and shared their stories and lives, minute by minute, with their community back in the UK.
We didn’t just take three mums with us to Mozambique– we took three whole communities.
In the cloud
Rather than developing an expensive microsite and try to create a new audience/community we let the project ‘live’ in existing social networks. This approach meant that we immediately increased our audience because we took the campaign to them, to the channel with an existing engaged audience. It’s a different approach because the project lives in ‘the cloud’.
Who is @MrVaccine
We set up a fun twitter feed called @MrVaccine. @MrVaccine was the ‘vaccine’ that the bloggers would see given to a child in rural outpost clinic. (MrsVaccine had a few things to say about his trip).
We designed a whole storyline for him and his journey and it ran in parallel to the bloggers journey.
For example when the bloggers got on the plane he was down in the hold, and as they headed for their hotel in Maputo he headed for the coldstore in the vaccine warehouse.
@MrVaccine also gave us a fun ‘ask’ to celebrities and we found that as a result they were very willing to tweet for us bringing exposure to the project.
Tag team:
In addition to reporting live the bloggers were all tasked with having their own ‘tag team’ back in the UK to pass on their stories/tweets/photos.
Like a game of tag in the playground, these ‘tag’ teams of pre-determind bloggers around the UK were challenged to write their own blog post in response and then #passiton to other bloggers to do the same.
The concept put simply – was to ‘pass it on’. The result was an unprecedented amount of noise online and coverage in print and broadcast.
The brilliant Josie George and Maggy Woodley hosted this fabulous meme called This is me this is my future.
Thankyou…
This project would not have been possible without the hard work and dedication from Chris, Tracey and Lindsay. Thankyou for all your hardwork and for believing in the project from that first (what in honesty may have seemed like a fairly bonkers) phone call.
Thankyou to GAVI for all the assistance in the project planning and support throughout and Gates and DFID for taking guest posts and to Mike Sutherland, Rachel Palmer and the talented team at Save the Children.
The community support was just phenomenal and is a brilliant example of what we can achieve when we all work together. Thankyou.
And as always the biggest thanks need to be reserved for the healthworkers, mums and children who graciously let us into their homes and shared their stories and their lives.
Notable results:
Celebrity tweeters
Myleene Klass
Arlene Phillips
Stephen Fry
Jamie Oliver
Amanda Mealing
Christy Turlington
Regional coverage:
ITV Yorkshire - x 3 pieces (before/during/after) for the news programme as well a 2 online video diaries whilst in the field.
ITV West Country – two online video diaries whilst in the field with a news piece on the 9th and 13th.
BBC Points West – A piece for regional news programme on 9th and package for Politics Show on the 13th.
Preview and follow up interviews with BBC radios Sheffield x3 , Somerset x2 and Bristol x1 as well as commercial stations Hallam FM (x2 and online) , Viking FM (x1) and Heart West Country (x2 and online)
Interviews for features in The Sheffield Star, South Yorkshire Times (and online), Barnsley Chronicle x2 , Bath Chronicle, Somerset Standard x2, Somerset Life online, wearebarnsley.com (video diary).
National Coverage:
BBC 1 Breakfast: Save the Children calling for more money to be spent on vaccination: Interview with Red Ted Art’s Maggie Woodley and Save the Children CEO Justin Forsyth.
ITV Daybreak: Interview with bloggers.
ITV lunchtime news
Five Live Breakfast News
Telegraph – Charities’ Twitter campaign ‘to save 4million lives’ #4mlives
Number of blog posts by the community
Over 150
Twitter reach: 27 million
Total YouTube views (to date): Over 200,000
How we used twitter: As well as tweeting from the field we used twitter chats, twitter parties, twitter quizzes to help raise awareness.
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