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Launching and Running Social Media Channels to Promote the Global Goals

Launching and Running Social Media Channels to Promote the Global Goals

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The Problem

Impatient Optimists is an initiative of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that gives a platform to global health and development influencers to share their stories, in order to educate and engage globally-minded citizens around the world. The main website of the initiative (www.impatientoptimists.org) featured Chinese language content but received few visitors, due to the preference of Chinese netizens to engage with accounts on local platforms, rather than official websites.

In 2016, the Foundation’s China communications team decided to create a WeChat subscription account Impatient Optimists, explaining and promoting the health and development issues that the Foundation and its partners care about. While it is still a Foundation-branded channel, its mission is to raise awareness of the Global Goals and cultivate influencers who are willing to advocate for public good causes.

The Solution

As the Foundation’s digital retainer agency, Bridge Consulting worked closely with the communications team to develop a strategy with the aim to harness the power of social media and storytelling to create an online community of internationally-minded and socially-conscious young Chinese citizens. We also made the new WeChat account one of the important tactics to inform and engage this online community.

Since the inception of the channel in April 2016, we have been managing the editorial and producing content on a day-to-day basis. The range of content would include the Foundation’s core interests in global health and development, but also take in wider topics such as education, climate change and environmental protection.

We have run articles on topics as diverse as the role of breastfeeding in fighting poverty, efforts to combat malaria by controlling mosquitoes in Sub-Saharan Africa, the “toilet revolution” using new technologies to promote sanitation, and the effect of gender stereotypes on young women, curating one of the most compelling mixes of content in Chinese cyberspace.

In addition, we utilize Bridge’s deep networks of digital influencers, artists and musicians to create compelling online content and creative offline cultural events for clients that support the Impatient Optimists vision of sustaining and resourcing dynamic and engaged communities.

The Impact

By the end of 2019, the Impatient Optimists WeChat account had over 22,000 followers and had published over 500 articles, the vast majority featuring original commissioned content.

Our actual impact is amplified far beyond this through the partnership model that is central to the strategy we developed at the beginning. We have built a network of 130 influencers who host their own WeChat public accounts with followers numbering from 10,000 to 10 million. We maintain regular contact with this network through a private WeChat group, encouraging them to re-publish our content through their own channels.

This project also allowed us to build up our own expertise in a wide range of global issues, and won us the 2019 China Social Impact Award presented by the British Chamber of Commerce in partnership with the United Nations.

Developing Creative Content around World Toilet Day

Developing Creative Content around World Toilet Day

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The Problem

In line with the promise of achieving SDG 6: Ensure access to water and sanitation for all, World Toilet Day on November 19 is a United Nations Observance that raises awareness of the importance of safely managed sanitation and the fact that 4.2 billion people currently have no access to this necessity.

It also marks the date of an important revolution in China – “Toilet Revolution” – which aims to create sanitation infrastructure and public services that work for everyone and that turns waste into value. In less than three years since 2015, this revolution in China saw 68,000 public restrooms built in urban areas and over 10 million toilets upgraded in the countryside with another 64,000 public facilities slated to open by the end of 2020. However, the revolution needs to address not only technology implementation but also social acceptance.

In 2018, Bridge Consulting was engaged by the China Global Philanthropy Institute (CGPI), the Roca Beijing Gallery (Roca) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) to put together events and activities designed to raise awareness of sanitation issues and innovative solutions, and to encourage a dialogue on the positive socio-economic and environmental impact such innovations can offer.

The Solution

The Indian film Toilet: A Love Story was imported to mainland China in August 2018 and landed on top of the Chinese box office, which created opportunities for conversation and learning around sanitation issues. A week after the launch of the film, we teamed up with Roca to help CGPI bring together a panel of speakers from the film industry and development sector to discuss challenges and opportunities for improved sanitation services in China and India as well as answering questions from the press. 

With the permission of the company that imported the film, we played a clip at the beginning of the panel discussion, and then invited Mohnish Kedia, a Yenching Scholar from India to give a first-hand perspective on the sanitation and cultural issues described in the film. The panel was also joined by a UNICEF official and a Chinese documentary director, who shared their perspectives and insights on global sanitation crisis and China’s toilet revolution.

Building on the success of the panel discussion, we partnered with Roca again in the lead up to the World Toilet Day to organize a by-invitation event gathering for creative professionals – artists, designers, advertising agencies –, public health, and NGO experts in an intimate gallery event to discuss how to harness art and design’s powers to improve environmental and sanitation conditions worldwide. A particular emphasis was on building personal links with the Beijing creative community to recruit long-term influencers who can advocate on this topic through art, design and advertising. At the event, we also showcased a video made by our team featuring a Beijing restaurant owner who helped introduce a nature-based sanitation solution to China. 

Almost at the same time, Bill Gates spoke about the future of sanitation at the Reinvented Toilet Expo in Beijing. We designed and strategically promoted a series of online campaigns about Bill’s speech to strengthen awareness of sanitation issues and innovative solutions and promote audience engagement. We successfully pitched an article on this topic to a popular Chinese social media magazine channel, GQ Lab, whose platforms aim at a tech-savvy, young, and educated urban Chinese population. We also produced a comic strip highlighting the work of champions in global water, sanitation and hygiene and linking it with an annual film award ceremony, which was a big show business news at that time.

The Impact

The event hosted with Roca attracted over 30 target attendees from the creative sector, along with media and NGO experts, providing a major opportunity to ‘cross-pollinate’ ideas between these diverse professional and social groups, and to increase awareness of nature-based sanitation solutions among the communities represented by these influencers. As a direct result of connections made at this event, Roca had also established relationships with four potential partners for future collaboration. 

Our social media campaign saw a total of two million “perception-shifting engagements” – defined as views of the videos and blog posts that made up the campaign’s core content – double our original target of one million. Much of this was built on our success in securing re-posts from influential public figures and media outlets, such as the CEO of Weibo and Guokr, a popular science media outlet. Our locally-generated secondary content also exceeded its readership targets, with the GQ Lab article and comic strip garnering a total of 46,000 views across Weibo and WeChat against a target of 20,000.

Promoting the Jack Ma Foundation’s Annual Events

Promoting the Jack Ma Foundation’s Annual Events

The Problem

At the request of the Jack Ma Foundation, BRIDGE provided social media communications planning and execution support to their two annual tent pole events – the Rural Teacher Awards Ceremony and the New Rural Headmaster Forum. The client hoped these two milestone events would increase the followership of the Jack Ma Foundation’s social media accounts, and enhance their visibility in the public.

The Solution

After in-depth discussion with our client, we concluded that these two events should not be publicized separately, but be viewed through the lens of a long-term branding strategy. We suggested that our client lay out risk management strategy, while also striving for brand improvement. We also suggested our client build a coalition of stakeholders in the education space in order to deepen communications engagement in support of its long-term corporate branding.

Following 2016 Jack Ma Rural Teacher Award Ceremony, we developed a phased, and platform-oriented social media strategy for the Foundation – increasing awareness through tent pole events, and cultivate good reputation through every day communications engagement.

Guided by this strategy, our preparation for the 2017 New Rural Headmaster Forum focused on routine event communications support and incorporated innovative, long-term collaboration with reputable partners. We facilitated our client’s engagement with Marielza Oliveira, Director of UNESCO’s Beijing Office, and UNESCO’s headquarters in Paris. The forum focused on access to quality education, a priority of United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Recognizing the potential to connect a Chinese initiative to global development priorities, we positioned the initiative in response to the global endeavor of promoting education equality. This high-level approach helped BRIDGE successfully attract and engage two A-list celebrities (Xiaoming Huang, and Roy Wang of TFBoys), which further amplified the Forum’s impact.

The Impact

Acting upon our suggestion, Jack Ma and his foundation started tweeting the hashtag #JackMaRuralHeadmasterInitiative before, during, and after the event. With retweet and support from 40 celebrity partners and the Weibo operation team, the campaign hashtag generated 890 million views and 1.63 million mentions in a week. The event live stream received more than 25 million views. The online conversation we facilitated around the campaign hashtag helped us connect the Jack Ma Foundation with UNESCO’s China Representative, creating new relationships for future communications collaborations between the two organizations.

Raising Public Awareness on Antimicrobial Resistance

Raising Public Awareness on Antimicrobial Resistance

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The Problem

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) happens when microorganisms change and grow resistant to the antimicrobial drugs that are used to treat the infections they cause. Microorganisms that develop AMR are sometimes referred to as “superbugs,” as they are unable to be treated with effective medicines, resulting in persistent infections and increasing the risk of spreading the infection to others.

AMR is one of the most daunting public health challenges in China and worldwide. It is considered a global crisis by the World Health Organization (WHO), the G20 and the United Nations (UN). In China, AMR in some important clinical isolates is high because of the misuse and overuse of antimicrobials in clinical practice and in animal feed.

Bridge Consulting was approached by the WHO China office to develop a public awareness campaign on Weibo during 2016 World Antibiotic Awareness Week. In response to the continuous spread of AMR, the campaign wanted to raise the profile of this public health issue, and encourage best practices among the general public, health professionals, and policy-makers.

The Solution

Given that AMR is a complicated technical concept for most of the general public, our first step was to clarify the definitions of “antibiotic” and “antimicrobial resistance”. We needed to translate the scientific jargon behind AMR into an easily communicated concept. From our research on Weibo, we found that people who had been actively talking about AMR were mostly physicians and other health professionals, who are also our target audience. We saw the potential for these health professionals to serve as “influencers.” 

Informed by our research, we suggested to our client partner some influential physicians on Weibo to reach more audiences. Given the British government’s role in supporting AMR research and advocacy, we connected the WHO with the British Embassy in China for collaboration.

We developed a social media toolkit with key messages, graphics, and videos from the WHO. We shared the toolkit with our partners, including influential physicians, and the British Embassy, and worked with them closely to ensure they could take full advantage of the toolkit.

The Impact

We have orchestrated Weibo campaigns for the World Antibiotic Awareness Week in 2016 and 2017, promoting collaboration on AMR among the WHO, the Chinese government, the British Embassy in China, and high-profile health professionals. As a result of our efforts, the campaign hashtag #HandleAntibioticsWithCare have garnered more than 70 million impressions and nearly 50,000 engagements. Some of health professionals we helped engage for the AMR campaign then became the WHO’s long term partners to disseminate public health messages on social media platforms. 

An animated video that we produced explaining how superbugs acquire and pass on their antibiotic resistance received more than 3 million views during the campaign period. WHO China also published the video on its AMR webpage.