The Girl Who Built a Rocket

Despite being the fourth biggest island in the world, almost half of Madagascans have no clean water. WaterAid’s communication objective was to tell the story of the yet-to-be-realised potential of the community in Madagascar, and the barriers blocking it, in a way that would drive increased consideration. Our campaign put water at the heart of the news cycle. With three Mars missions landing in early 2021, we identified a cultural moment with universal meaning. Billions are being spent to find water on Mars, but nobody is thirsty there. We juxtaposed this with the story of a community in Madagascar, and the difference clean water could make there. We created a stunning animated film that uses the shared dreams of all children everywhere to establish a universal platform of understanding, around which we can show WA’s role in supporting communities to take control. Media included an exclusive C4 TV/VOD partnership with a contextual C4 News spot on the evening the NASA mission landed. We saw a +5% uplift in Consideration metric, plus a huge 18% uplift in cash and regular donations, helping us achieve the highest gross response rate in over a year, enabling us to fund additional projects in Madagascar.