Principle 3: Tell stories

🧠 The Challenge: We understand our world through stories as much as facts. 

Evidence suggests that humans are not good at understanding statistics and facts. 

💡 The Solution: Use narratives to engage your audience. Avoid messages that include statistics, as these often fail to convey a message effectively. 

In addition, it is important that narrative-based messages highlighting the disease do not shock the reader, as fear-based tactics can ‘paralyze’ people and prevent positive action. In delivering a message about vaccine-preventable diseases, we must be sure to follow the description of the disease with an action (vaccination) they can take to prevent the disease.

Examples of good practice: Storytelling

🗒️ UNICEF Pakistan

In Pakistan, insights from social listening analysis revealed that COVID-19 vaccines were not being fairly distributed at the time, so social media posts were designed to emphasise everyday people accessing the COVID-19 vaccines and helping others to do so. 

Authentic testimonials from community members getting vaccinated against COVID-19 were used to emphasise collective responsibility in getting vaccinated and helping others.

🗒️ UNICEF Philippines

[ENG] “I make sure that my child is up to date with routine immunization.” –Julie Ann and her baby, Jean Claire (1)

For UNICEF Philippines, a GIF tells the story of a child getting vaccinated to encourage other parents to catch up on their children’s vaccine schedule. Authentic testimonials featuring real-life interactions between healthcare workers and caregivers in the field tell a compelling narrative and were highly memorable.

🗒️ UNICEF Bangladesh

Metaphors are like a very short story. Eula Biss, acclaimed author of On Immunity: An Inoculation illustrates this when she notes that vaccines produce natural immunity because they “invite the immune system to produce its own protection.” The antibodies that protect us are “manufactured in the human body, not in factories.”

[ENG] Are you forgetting something? Half the protection is not enough – learn more about COVID-19 booster vaccines.

In UNICEF Bangladesh, playful images with brief metaphors relayed messages around COVID-19 vaccine boosters to nudge people towards getting their booster dose.

🗒️ UNICEF Cameroon

In UNICEF Cameroon, this ad uses the metaphor of an umbrella as protection and emphasises the importance of completing the full course of HPV vaccines.