Excellence in Corporate Communications - External Stakeholder

Summary of work

The aim of the campaign was to shift attention from the control of schistosomiasis to the ultimate goal – elimination – whilst celebrating the ten-year anniversary of Merck’s medicine donation programme.

We needed to create a campaign that would harness the enthusiasm of the community and amplify our key message – elimination. So we crafted a shareable platform to engage stakeholders on and offline, launching it in a way that would grab the attention of the community.

We published a report, The People #MakingSchistory: The Global Fight Against Schistosomiasis featuring stories from those involved in the fight for elimination. We created #MakingSchistory – a platform that is unique, creative, easy to spell, say and share to engage stakeholders in key conversations. We encouraged user-generated content and offered the media a photo opportunity with a 25m long yellow schistosomiasis worm emblazoned with #MakingSchistory floating on Lake Geneva at the WHO NTD Summit.

During the campaign, #MakingSchistory was independently used by the WHO and Médecins Sans Frontières, content was used and engaged with by 17 leading influencers and NGOs and schistosomiasis had the highest SOV during the summit.

“We’re all so very impressed with Wormzilla. Big congratulations!” Timothy Lee Rose, RTI International.

Judges' comments

The judges thought this was a well-rounded campaign and particularly praised the engagement of external stakeholders like MSF. It had excellent third party feedback with fantastic results.