Celebrating strength in numbers

Every year, World Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Day brings together the global MS community to share stories, raise awareness and campaign for change. 

In 2015, its organisers, the MS International Federation, came to us because they needed a new website and a refreshed creative campaign. More importantly, they needed to inspire more people to take action.

The challenge

EMS International Federation is a unique global network of 44 international member organisations, working across 90 countries.

They decided World MS Day 2015 was going to focus on access for people with MS. Not just access to diagnosis, treatment and support, but to buildings, travel and leisure facilities and to education, employment and political representation.

Our challenge was to come up with a campaign that would work equally well for all member organisations — whatever their size, location and budget. In some countries, members have the resources to run TV ads; others barely have the resources to run an office.

Our challenge was to come up with a campaign that would work equally well for all member organisations — whatever their size, location and budget.

Creating a universal concept

Rather than focus directly on access, where people’s circumstances and experiences of MS would vary wildly, we wanted to form a creative route that would resonate across countries and cultures.

We took the universal concepts of strength in numbers and strength in relationships, and used them to celebrate how people work together to support each other. World MS Day would be a chance for people to say thank you — to loved ones, friends, carers, health professionals, and anyone who helped them live with MS.

We needed symbols of strong relationships that avoided cliché and would work internationally. So we used illustrations of animals to represent the different ways humans work together to look after one another. For example, we chose geese, which travel thousands of miles together, to represent the inner strength and unique journeys of people affected by MS.

One mistake we made was conveying strength in numbers with an illustration of ants. When we ran this past the global working group there were objections. In India, we learnt, you’d never compare someone to an ant.

We created an online toolkit with web banners, cards, flyers and posters, and encouraged people to share them in the run-up to World MS Day, and use them to thank and celebrate those who help them live with MS.

Translation challenges

The website design involved some careful thought. It needed to be directly translated into five languages, including Arabic, which reads right to left, rather than left to right — something we hadn’t tackled before. And we had to add a Google Translate plug-in to allow access for users speaking other languages.

The key challenge for the site design was that it needed to be perfect for the 2015 campaign and easily adaptable for future World MS Days. So we designed a modular site, making it simple to add content to different sections and quick and easy for the MS International Federation to update the site themselves.

Impact (at time of writing)

• The number of countries participating increased by 7% from 83 in 2015 to 89  in 2016
• The number of global events increased by 21%, from 317 in 2015 to more than 385 in 2016 
• The Twitter reach rocketed above 24 million during the week of World MS Day alone and the Instagram following grew 
• The uptake of translations rose, especiallywith Arabic and Spanish 

Overall, each of the three objectives for World MS Day 2016 were met. As ever, there was room to improve — from what we felt was a solid foundation.