During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was global distrust of government and corporate institutions, including the pharmaceutical companies who were developing the COVID-19 vaccine. In partnership with the Centre for Analytics and Behavioural Change, and funded by social investment firm, Impact Amplifier, we created a campaign to combat vaccine hesitancy. The target audience was the so-called “movable middle”, the people who were not necessarily anti-vax but were understandably hesitant to get the vaccine, as there was a lot of misinformation and disinformation going around social media.

To persuade the movable middle to get vaccinated, we had already created a campaign using real nurses who shared their moving stories from working in COVID wards. The second phase of the campaign, we approached differently. The conspiracy theories about the vaccine were mostly ridiculous, so to show how nonsensical they were we used humour to upstage the fake news and bust the myths. We created Under the Microscope featuring Dr Riaad Moosa, because he could do comedy and talk about medical issues with credibility (being a qualified medical doctor).

In Episode 1 the conspiracy theory we disproved was that the vaccine injects microchips into people’s bodies. Riaad’s quirky sense of humour combined with clear, evidence-based explanations of why the vaccine was safe and effective formed a compelling argument in favour of getting vaccinated. At a time when millions of people had died from the virus, the vaccine was proven to reduce chances of hospitalisation and death. Our plea once again was to get vaccinated and to help protect others by stopping the spread.