Globalising a communication toolkit
Role: creative direction, design direction, copywriting
As part of our engagement with the UNICEF polio team—alongside the work we were doing in Pakistan around caregiver acceptance—we were charged with developing a strategic resource to support regional responses to polio communication needs at the field office level. The biggest issue they faced was raw capability and capacity—in an outbreak situation the team is facing literally 100s of issues that feel more pressing than creative demand creation or behavior change communication.
The solution: the Polio Communication Global Guide, a How-to Manual for the Art and Science of Maximizing Immunization through Communication.
The end result is almost 200 pages of content split across four volumes organized into an overview of immunization communication strategy, and then separate volumes for different scenarios:
- “Outbreak” (the disease feels novel for the population and is in crisis)
- “Enduring outbreak” (after a while, everyone grows tired of the threat and just wants to move on)
- “Maintenance” (the immediate threat has passed, but the virus is still potentially lingering)
It was packaged in a slipcase and included dozens of graphic visualizations, illustrations, sample creatives, and worksheets.
We knew from our own research and interviews with the in-country teams how the basic dynamics of how populations deal with epidemics over time, but none of the McCann team had ever lived through one. I personally had a hard time internalizing the idea of vaccine resistance and general disregard for a wild virus, but after living with COVID-19, I’m a bit surprised by how well the work holds up.
