Dentsu international has partnered a global NGO, ‘Malaria No More UK’ to launch ‘Draw The Line Against Malaria’ campaign. The star-studded creative campaign invites youth from across Africa and the globe to join the movement to end the world’s oldest deadliest disease. The global integrated campaign is the latest in a three-year pro bono partnership involving creative and media agencies from across the Dentsu international network, aimed at ending a disease that kills a child every two minutes.
The ground-breaking campaign taps into a cultural moment where new generations are claiming their futures back from this deadly disease, combining a digital platform, activation and powerful film.
The campaign invites people to share the cinematic hero film, directed by acclaimed Nigerian music video director Meji Alabi, which showcases the captivating talent and energy emanating out of the African continent, including Dr Omotola J Ekeinde, Nigerian actress and philanthropist; Osas Ighodaro, Nigerian American actress and producer; Saray Khumalo, SouthAfrican explorer; Eliud Kipchoge, Olympic Gold-medallist and marathon world record-holder; Siya Kolisi, Captain of the Springboks, South Africa’s World Cup winning rugby team;and Sherrie Silver, award-winning Rwandan British choreographer.
The stars are joined by global artist Láolú Senbanjo, and a team of malaria community champions who feature in different scenes to tell the human story of malaria and the devastating impact it has on their education, employment, health and prospects. With 74% of Africans now aged under 35, the youth contingent are powerful agents of change and the campaign represents a rallying cry for them to step up action in the fight against malaria.
dentsu teams from Amsterdam, Cape Town, Copenhagen, Geneva, London, Nairobi and New York worked in close collaboration with a collation of agencies, including the African Leaders Malaria Alliance (ALMA), the African Union Commission, The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Impact Santé Afrique, Malaria No More UK, RBM Partnership to End Malaria and Speak Up Africa.
The creative and strategy was led by Isobar Amsterdam with dentsu media agencies iProspect and Carat collaborating to drive media planning across multiple African markets including Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Africa and Zambia as well as target donor markets including the UK, USA, Japan and Australia. The digital platform was created by Isobar in collaboration with Firstborn.
At the heart of the campaign is a fresh new universal visual language made up of lines, symbols and patterns, the ‘Muundo’ created by acclaimed Nigerian artist, activist, and human rights lawyer, Láolú Sebanjo. The ‘Muundo’ has been designed to inspire young people to show their support for the malaria fight. Youth across cultures and continents are invited to add their unique line to the Zero Malaria website: www.zeromalaria.org and contribute to a collective message asking world leaders to step up the fight against malaria.
Each line will create a unique piece of art that is added to a globally crowdsourced mural. The artwork will be presented to world leaders as a collective message of solidarity powered by the people at the Malaria and NTDs Summit on 24 June 2021, on the eve of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Kigali, Rwanda. The Summit is a milestone moment in the malaria fight and enabler of game changing political decisions including delivering the commitment to halve malaria across the Commonwealth by 2023.
Dentsu International’s support of Malaria No More began in 2017, born out of its commitment to the United Nations’ Common Ground collaboration. #MalariaMustDie was the first campaign launched with dentsu’s support, supported by a range of agencies both inside and outside of dentsu including Carat, iProspect, Amplifi and Isobar. The campaign reached 1 billion people globally and in April 2018 at the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in London 53 Heads of Government committed to halve malaria in the Commonwealth by 2023. At the Malaria Summit which happened at the time of CHOGM, governments, science and the private sector added their support pledging $4.1 billion to accelerate research and development of new tools for the malaria fight and expand access to life-saving tools.
In 2019, dentsu agency Isobar developed a web tool to report progress towards halving malaria by 2023 using data provided by the World Health Organisation. Together with the Malaria Creative Collective, dentsu helped raise an additional USD$14 billion at the Global Fund Replenishment in October 2019. In 2019 Dentsu was appointed to lead the strategic development of a global brand, Zero Malaria, with the power to unite all malaria activity across the world. Created by Isobar, the Zero Malaria brand launched on World Malaria Day 2020.
