As COVID-19 pandemic spread, there was another pandemic infecting our lives - misinformation.

As countries worked to respond to the health emergency, people were looking for accurate information to help stay safe. But in the absence of clear and reliable sources, misinformation spread like wildfire, magnifying the negative impact of the virus.

The team created Verified, a global initiative to improve access to and spread reliable COVID-19 information, by generating creative content with and for different audiences around the world, creating strong media collaborations, and amplifying messages through influencers, public figures and social media platforms. Verified set out to inspire hope and solidarity for a truly global recovery.

As the COVID-19 virus spread, science was racing to catch up. Even before the pandemic was declared, fear & confusion were also spreading about this new threat to our lives & liberties. Conflicting reports & evolving science created an information vacuum where misinformation was allowed to proliferate.

The political, social & cultural make-up of the world in 2020 only served to exacerbate the uncertainty created by the pandemic. Lack of trust in governing institutions made a coordinated and accepted response to the virus less palatable for the general public. In some countries, governments had weak communications infrastructures that couldn't disseminate the consistent messages that are vital in a time of crisis.

Add into this vortex a group of world leaders & influential voices that presented conflicting advice about the virus evidenced by hearsay and rumour; rumour that gathered credence faster than veritable information. The world was unprepared for a pandemic.

The creative idea was to create a trusted global communications initiative that would collaborate with unconventional actors to make innovative activations and emotional, human-centered content that resonate with groups most susceptible to misinformation.

The social media double tick of Verified became synonymous with veracity and consistency that had been absent since the pandemic was declared. The Verified campaign was born.

The innovative activations ranged from Reddit series of AMA (Ask Me Anything) with misinformation experts, to collaborations with TikTok, Hello Kitty, GIPHY, WikiHow, VT (one of Facebook’s largest pages), and influencers, civil society organizations, governments, social media platforms, regulators and media/broadcasters.

Verified developed a global infrastructure to improve access to & spread of information, by:

-Generating creative content from various perspectives

-Creating strong media collaborations

-Amplifying messages through influencers, public figures & social media platforms

Our driving insight was that to create impact in the fight against misinformation, we needed to mobilise the public in understanding & combating misinformation themselves. Creating a multi-layered content development process, Verified worked to provide accurate, real-time scientific public health information to flood the information space.

The key was getting the public to act, & to regulate their behaviour. Despite vastly different cultures & contexts, global audiences were unsure what the pandemic meant, how to keep themselves safe & what sources of information to trust. We needed to act to make sure there was safe, reliable content, packaged in a way that would travel online, & distributed on platforms to reach audiences where they were. Fast.

Verified has created over 1000 pieces of content in over 50 languages in 130 countries around the world.

In Brazil, activations ranged from lighting up Brazil’s largest landmark, Christ the Redeemer, to a song with Brazil’s most famous artists, comic strips, a metro station exhibition, soccer activation, TikTok challenge, comedy videos, a graffiti mural and an intervention during Carnival.

In India, to counter young people not wearing masks, we identified an up-and-coming, influential musician to produce a song & music video called “Mask On.” In collaboration with Flipkart, India’s biggest online store, we created a misinformation quiz with comedian Mallika Dua that more than 1 million people took.

In Africa we collaborated with MultiChoice, Africa’s largest entertainment company, to reach young African audiences across the continent.

In the Middle East, we had collaborations with Al Jazeera, Alaraby TV, Rozana Radio and more to reach a diverse audience across the region.

In less than one year, Verified reached over 1 billion people in 130 countries in 50 languages with lifesaving information. 78,000 Digital First Responders signed up to amplify accurate information via peer-to-peer interaction — one of the most effective means of persuasion. Verified activated 250+ unconventional actors with large scale reach & access to mainstream audiences that wouldn’t otherwise get health information.

Through data from two controlled environment studies, Verified content was found to be successful in increasing trust in vaccines, specifically around sentiments of safety & effectiveness. Increase in trust ranges from 10% up to 20%. In relation to behaviour change, Verified content effectively reduced the likelihood of people sharing fake news by 5%–10%, in data from multiple experiments conducted with Verified content.

Verified & its learnings about misinformation can be leveraged as a tool to tackle other forms of misinformation & hate speech, such as climate change.