David Beckham lends his voice to Malaria AI petition
David Beckham is lending his voice to the fight to malaria in his latest off-field role as an ambassador for non-profit organisation Malaria No More in its battle to eradicate the mosquito-borne disease.
R/GA London, Ridley Scott Associates (RSA) Amsterdam, Synthesia and Dentsu Aegis Network are all collaborating on the Malaria Must Die, So Millions Can Live campaign, which harnesses AI video synthesis technology to deliver unconventional creative.
Harnessing the power of speech the resulting call to action encourages people to participate in the world’s first voice petition demanding an urgent political response to the disease at a Global Fund meeting in October.
Kate Wills, director of partnerships and Communications at Malaria No More UK says: “We deliberately sought R/GA as our creative partner as their ability to deliver transformational marketing can help us shake up and reframe public and political perceptions of this global killer. This phase of the campaign is critical to ensure we get ahead in the global fight”.
Matt Lodder, the executive vice president and managing director of R/GA EMEA added: “Malaria is the world’s oldest disease, still a child dies every two minutes from it. Yet people are still deaf to this message. So with this campaign, we wanted to combine our innovative approach to communications, design and technology to get malaria firmly back on the agenda."
"It’s our responsibility as professionals working in the creative industry, to make people sit up and listen, which is why we harnessed the power of voice as the medium in this work.”
The novel campaign depicts Beckham apparently speaking in nine languages as he invites listeners to become involved, but the voices actually belong to others having been digitally mapped to Beckham’s own features with the help of AI-powered video synthesis technology.
The non-profit body had previously teamed up with Aardman to create the Hugh Laurie voiced Mozzie character.