A global consortium of 21 advertising companies has formed to reinforce awareness of the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 messaging service, according to a June 9 news release.
The advertising companies, based in seven different countries, are amplifying WHO’s efforts to communicate accurate information about the pandemic through online and out-of-home digital media messaging.
The consortium is focusing mainly on promoting WHO’s multilingual messaging service campaign that utilizes WhatsApp and Facebook. The campaign invites users to text "hi" in Arabic, English, French, Hindi, Italian, Spanish or Portuguese to receive prompt and credible information about COVID-19.
The messaging service, which allows WHO to deliver information to people as soon as they request it, is seeking to fight the spread of misinformation. It provides reliable details on COVID-19 symptoms and how to go about protecting loved ones from the novel coronavirus, as well gives users recent situation reports and up-to-date statistics.