The Havas Health Award for Excellence via Digital/Social Media

Summary of work

Meningitis kills more children under five in the UK than any other infectious disease and leaves many more maimed with life-long disabilities. Despite this, parents have a worryingly low awareness and understanding of the disease and the protection that their children receive through vaccinations. 93 per cent of mums are active on Facebook; nearly 40 per cent of parents rely on the internet for health advice and 20 per cent value information from peers about specific child health issues. Based on these insights, the agency devised an innovative digital strategy to spread the word that children are not protected against all types of meningitis. We pioneered the use of social media with one of the first industry-led Facebook pages with two way dialogue to truly engage with the public and facilitate peer-to-peer discussion. Ten influential parent bloggers were engaged as campaign ambassadors and a digital disease awareness programme reached an audience of approximately 31 million. This included a Facebook community of over 2,000 ‘Likes’ built in only four months*; film views of over 6.6 million; and 24.7 million chances to see via on- and offline media channels, leading to a notable increase in awareness among parents that children are not protected against all types of meningitis.

*9 months on from launch the campaign Facebook page now has over 13,000 Likes and an additional 100,000 film views have been achieved.

Judges comments

The team mobilised online opinion leaders to extend the reach of its simple yet effective message. Audience segments were engaged through relevant and extensive use of media. The multi-channel approach was connected and produced good results based on solid insights from primary patient and customer research.