How it works
How the toolkit works
You answer 14 questions about your campaign: the vaccine, the country, who you need to reach and what's stopping them. About three minutes later the Campaign Toolkit has drafted the whole thing: a strategy, a brief for whoever makes your videos, scripts for each phase, a checklist to run every video past, replies ready for the comments, and a plan for measuring it.
It's a first draft, and it has opinions. Read it, push back on it and change what's wrong. This guide covers setting a campaign up, then each section of the campaign menu: what it's for, where it comes from and what you can do there.
The screenshots come from an example campaign we set up for this guide: HPV vaccine for girls, Kano State, Nigeria. Click any screenshot to see it full size.
Part 1 · Before you start
The drafts come with a point of view
Every draft is shaped by what we've seen work in public health campaigns on social media. Knowing these beliefs explains most of what you'll read, and most of what you might want to argue with.
- Social media reaches the people who are on it. Use it to reach whoever you can reach there cheaply, so more of your money and staff time can go to the people you can't. The drafts never treat social as the whole campaign.
- Video first, and the platforms are your call. TikTok and YouTube are usually the cheapest way to reach people, so the drafts suggest starting there. Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are all on the table. The plan shows you how to check which ones your audience actually uses.
- It won't set your budget or your timeline. It explains what drives those numbers and how to start small and scale up. If you give it a budget or a campaign length, it works with yours.
- Everything starts from a behavior. What people do now, what you want them to do, and what stands between the two. You set this up in the wizard, and every section builds on it.
- The message lands in the first three seconds. Every script opens with the point, because a viewer who scrolls past at second four never sees the rest.
- Measurement is honest about what it can prove. Views and shares aren't vaccinations. The measurement plan keeps what social media can show apart from what would mean the campaign worked.
What it won't do
- Name a price for a vaccine or a service, or call it free. Questions about cost go to a health worker.
- Promise what a clinic or its staff will do.
- Persuade with fear.
- Suggest AI-generated people or video for your creative.
- Watch your videos for you. The checklist is yours to tick.
Part 2 · Setting up
A campaign starts with 14 questions
Getting in
The toolkit is invite-only for now. Open the link in your invitation email and sign in with Google, or with a sign-in link we email you. Use the address the invitation went to, because that's how the toolkit finds it.
Once you're in, admins can invite teammates from Settings, under Team. Members can view and edit campaigns. Admins can also manage the team. An invitation link lasts seven days.
The wizard
Start a campaign from New campaign on your campaigns page. The questions come in 6 short sections that run across the top of the screen, and your answers save as you go. A panel on the right, the galley proof, fills in with what you've told it so far. If you stop partway, the campaign waits under Setup in progress until you come back.
1 · The Basics
- 1Campaign name. What should we call this campaign? This is also where you can change the behavioral framework the toolkit thinks in. It starts on BeSD (Behavioural and Social Drivers). Fogg, COM-B, the Health Belief Model and Stages of Change are the alternatives.
- 2Vaccine. Which vaccine(s) are you working on? One or more, from routine immunization to measles, polio, HPV, malaria and others.
- 3Country. Where is this campaign running? Plus an optional city, state or district. The country decides which platform and reach data the drafts use.
2 · The Audience
- 4Audience. Who is your target audience? Up to four groups in priority order, such as mothers of infants or fathers of HPV-age girls, plus a description in your own words if you want.
- 5Behavior & barrier. What's holding them back? Answer a short guided interview, or pick the barriers yourself. You can attach a research PDF here.
- 6Trusted voices. Who does your audience trust most? Health workers, religious leaders, other parents, teachers, community elders and so on. The scripts cast from this list.
3 · The Goal
- 7Goal. What does success look like? How far you're trying to move people: be aware, change attitude, form an intention, take action. Pick up to three, or all four as a multi-phase campaign.
- 8Metrics. How will you measure success? What you'll watch, grouped by the goal you picked.
- 9Budget & timeline. There's no budget box. This step explains what drives cost and timing, then lets you add a launch date, a campaign length and a note about any fixed budget.
- 10Campaign statement. Here's your campaign statement. The toolkit turns your answers into a short statement of the campaign: who it's for, what's in the way and what success looks like. Edit it or regenerate it until it's right, then click Looks right.
4 · Tactics
- 11Channels. Where does this audience spend time online? TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, X, Telegram or others.
- 12Content creators. Who will create the content? Your own team, local creators, community health workers, a partner or an agency.
5 · Organization
- 13Organization. Who is this campaign for? The organization it belongs to, and who it's on behalf of if that's someone else.
6 · Your research
- 14Background research. Any research you'd like us to read? Up to three documents. Optional. The last button reads Generate my campaign.
Where to spend your time. Behavior & barrier decides what every script and reply is trying to change, so give it the most thought. The campaign statement is the one step you must confirm, because everything after it is built on it.
Most other steps have Skip for now, and you can fill gaps later on the Assumptions page. Skipped answers make the drafts more generic.
Part 2 · Generating
The sections are written in order, in about three minutes
Click Generate my campaign and the toolkit writes the campaign in four stages. Each stage reads what the earlier ones wrote, and the page tells you what it's working on as it goes.
Stage 1
Audience Archetypes
Splits your audience into the groups that behave differently.
Stage 2
Campaign Plan, Measurement & KPIs
Written side by side from your answers.
Stage 3
Creative Brief, Creative Checklist
The brief reads the plan. The checklist's campaign checks come from the brief.
Stage 4
Video Scripts, Comment Playbook
Both are filed under the plan's phases.
The order explains how the parts fit. The plan's phases become the filing system for your scripts and comment replies, and the brief's message turns into checks on the checklist.
When it finishes you get a notification and an email, and the page offers Continue to campaign. Now and then one piece fails. If a section is empty when you open it, it usually offers a button to generate it. If it doesn't, tell us through EddyDesk (see the last part of this guide).
Menu · 1 of 10
Overview
The campaign's home page.
The top shows the campaign's name, place and audience, with Share beside it. Under that is your team, with Invite, and a panel that controls who can see this campaign.
In that panel, choose Everyone on your team or Just these people. Each person is an owner or an editor. You can add someone by email even if they're on a different team, and they'll see this campaign and nothing else of yours. A campaign can have several owners and always keeps at least one, so the last owner has to make someone else an owner before leaving.
A line under the panel lists what the drafts drew on: the Upswell team's curated examples, their judgments on past drafts and the patterns they've seen work, plus when your country's platform data was last updated.
Below that are the timeline, a snapshot of which platforms reach people in your country, and often a note from the Upswell team taken from the plan. Then What to do next picks three practical decisions out of the drafts (who to feature, where to spend and how to read results) with a link to each. After that comes a card for every section with a one-line summary.
At the bottom, How are these outputs? lets you rate each report. The menu next to Share has Duplicate, Archive and Delete. Each campaign has one brief for one audience, so when you need to reach a second group, Add another audience starts a linked campaign for them.
- Made
- From the other sections
- You can
- Share · Invite · Choose who sees it · Duplicate · Add another audience · Rate each report
Menu · 2 of 10
Assumptions
Your wizard answers, and the place to change them.
Your confirmed campaign statement sits at the top, then every answer you gave, grouped by focus, audience, behavior, goal, reach and measurement. When a draft reads wrong, the cause is often here.
Edit an answer and the toolkit checks every section against the change. Review changes across modules shows each suggested fix as a redline, and you accept or dismiss each one. Nothing is rewritten without your say. An applied change can't be undone yet, so read the redline first.
Changing the vaccine, country, audience or behavioral framework changes the foundations, so the toolkit pauses until you've looked again. You review the redrafted assumptions, regenerate the campaign statement and confirm it. You can also add research documents on this page.
- Made
- From your wizard answers
- You can
- Edit any answer · Accept or dismiss fixes · Add research
Menu · 3 of 10
Audience Archetypes
Who you're actually talking to.
Two to four named people from your audience, split where they behave differently. A grandmother who makes the household's health decisions and a young father nobody has asked can both count as parents of infants, and they need different videos. Each card covers what the person does now, what you want them to do, their motivations and barriers, where you can reach them, and the angle most likely to work.
This comes first in the menu because everything after it is written for these people. If one doesn't fit this campaign, click Not this campaign, and they're left out the next time scripts or replies are regenerated. At least one has to stay. Regenerate replaces all of them with a fresh set.
Buying reach for these archetypes (beta)
What you'd set up in each ad manager to reach these people, what health ads aren't allowed to target on Meta, TikTok and YouTube, and which platforms you can buy ads on in your country. Ad rules change without warning, so each platform shows the date we last checked it. Confirm in the ad manager before you spend.
- Made
- Automatically, before everything else
- You can
- Not this campaign · Regenerate · Edit the introduction
Menu · 4 of 10
Campaign Plan
The strategy, written so a funder can follow it.
An executive summary and the strategic approach, then the campaign's phases: pre-launch, launch, sustain and so on, two to five of them depending on how long it runs. Each phase has an objective, how often to post, key activities sized for a team of one or two, signs it's working, and a list of key tasks you can tick off and add to. It ends with what success means and the main risks.
The plan teaches more than it instructs. It lays out the platform options for your country and explains how to test them against your real audience: talk to them, ask trusted local voices, watch what they do. Your own habits online may not match theirs. Where the Upswell team has something specific to add, it shows up as a From the Upswell team note.
The phases matter beyond this page, since scripts and comment replies are filed under them. You can rename, re-date, add, reorder or delete phases here. Rewrite on the summary and the approach makes them shorter, longer, more formal, more conversational, or aimed at a funder or a frontline worker.
- Made
- Automatically
- You can
- Edit the text · Rewrite two sections · Reshape phases · Tick key tasks · Download as text
Menu · 5 of 10
Creative Brief
What to hand the person making the videos.
The strategy lives in the plan, and the brief tells a creator what to make. It leads with one single-minded message in one sentence. Next comes a three-panel storyboard (the hook in the first three seconds, the support, the ask), then who the audience is and what moves them, the tone, who should be on camera, what must and mustn't appear, format notes and references.
It's the one section with a designed one-page PDF. Copy for WhatsApp gives you a short version to paste straight into a chat with your creator.
- Made
- Automatically, after the plan
- You can
- Edit most of it · Rewrite the audience · Download PDF · Copy for WhatsApp
Menu · 6 of 10
Video Scripts
Three scripts for every phase.
Each phase of the plan gets three scripts in different formats, such as a peer testimonial, a trusted voice, a demonstration or a quick fact. They run from 10 to 60 seconds. An amber Over length tag means the words won't fit the time. Words the audience hears or reads are written at about an eighth-grade reading level, in short sentences.
Every script puts the message in the first three seconds, and what the hook leads with depends on the barrier you named in the wizard:
| If the barrier is | The hook leads with |
|---|---|
| Misinformation | The correct fact |
| Access and logistics | Where, when and how easy it is (never the cost) |
| Social norms | People like them already doing it |
| Beliefs and attitudes | A voice they trust |
| Motivation | What they already care about |
Click a card for the whole script: hook, script, on-screen text, call to action and production notes, with a rough animatic you can play. Mark each one Draft, In use, Completed or Archived as you shoot. Regenerate writes a fresh set from the current plan, and saves the old set first so you can restore it from History.
- Made
- Automatically, three per phase
- You can
- Edit the words · Set status · Regenerate · Restore from History · Download as text
Menu · 7 of 10
Creative Checklist
Run every video past it before it goes out.
The checklist sits before the playbook in the menu because you use it while you're making the videos. The playbook is for after they're posted. For each video, start a run: give it a name, pick the type, platform and phase, and tick through. The run tells you whether the video fails a critical check, passes with suggestions, or passes clean. You do the ticking. The toolkit doesn't watch the video.
Nine checks are critical and must pass, among them a length under 60 seconds, the message in the first three seconds, no identifiable children without consent, and no claim about what anything costs. Twenty recommended checks follow, such as captions and subtitles. Then come checks written from your brief, which test whether the video says what the brief asked for.
- Made
- Fixed checks, plus some from your brief
- You can
- Start a run per video · Tick items · Regenerate the brief checks · Download as text
Menu · 8 of 10
Comment Playbook
Replies ready before the comments arrive.
The comments come whether or not anyone planned for them. For each phase, the playbook lists fifteen to twenty comments your audience is likely to post, tagged supportive, curious, skeptical, hesitant, hostile, do not engage or escalate. Each one has a reply your moderator can use and a note on why it's pitched that way. Replies are short and plain enough to read at a glance. A question about cost gets pointed to a health worker, never answered with a price.
Above the comments are three sets of rules for your moderators to read first: tone, when to escalate, and what not to engage with. Moderators hide or report spam, harassment, threats and illegal content, and leave honest criticism up.
Add the comments you actually get that it didn't predict. Delete the ones that don't fit (you have 30 seconds to undo). Edit the rules to match how your team works.
- Made
- Automatically, phase by phase
- You can
- Add and delete entries · Edit the rules · Filter and search · Regenerate · Download as text
Menu · 9 of 10
Measurement & KPIs
A plan for measuring, not a place to enter results.
It opens with how to think about what you're measuring and a goal written to be specific, measurable and time-bound. It won't make up a baseline or a target number. Then come the key performance indicators, sorted into three kinds:
| Output | What social can prove: views, shares, completions. |
|---|---|
| Proxy | The best signals you have when outcome data is out of reach. |
| Outcome | What would mean the campaign worked. Only suggested for things you can count yourself. |
A plan with no outcome metric is normal. Social media rarely gives you one, and the toolkit won't pretend it can. The page also drafts questions for a short survey before and after the campaign, with a plain caveat on what the numbers can tell you. Running the survey is up to you, and there's a link to email us if you'd like help.
Edit any KPI, add your own, and delete the ones you won't track.
- Made
- Automatically, alongside the plan
- You can
- Edit, add and delete KPIs · Rewrite the framing · Download as text
Menu · 10 of 10
Coach Lessons
Short lessons for the people who talk to families in person. Still being built.
Coach turns your plan into three-to-five-minute lessons for outreach workers, facility and pharmacy staff, supervisors and moderators, phase by phase. They're meant to reach workers' phones through an offline app. That app is still being built, so for now you can draft and review lessons, but there's no one to publish them to yet.
Unlike the rest, Coach doesn't generate on its own. Click Generate lessons once your plan exists.
- Made
- Only when you ask
- You can
- Draft · Edit · Vet lessons
Part 4 · Running a campaign
From first draft to the last week of posting
A rough order that works. Skip what doesn't apply to you.
- Check the foundations. Read Assumptions and Audience Archetypes first. If the archetypes don't sound like people you know, fix the assumptions before you read anything else.
- Read the plan, then test it. Take its platform suggestions to real people in your audience before you commit money. The plan explains how.
- Hand over the brief. Send your creator the brief as a PDF or over WhatsApp, along with the scripts for the first phase.
- Check each video before it posts. Start a checklist run for every video. Anything failing a critical check doesn't go out.
- Brief your moderators. Give them the playbook's rules and the replies for the current phase. Add the real comments it didn't predict, so the next person has a reply ready.
- Measure what you can. Track the KPIs you kept, and run the before-and-after survey if you can.
- Reach the next group. When you're ready for a second audience, use Add another audience on the Overview.
Part 4 · Editing and regenerating
Every draft is yours to change
Most sections let you edit their text right on the page. Edit the parts that are wrong. Regenerating a whole section to fix one paragraph throws away everything else, including what was right.
Rewrite one passage
Rewrite appears on a few passages: the plan's summary and approach, the brief's audience and the measurement framing. It redrafts that passage shorter, longer, plainer or for a different reader.
Regenerate a whole section
Video Scripts, Comment Playbook, Creative Checklist and Audience Archetypes can be regenerated. The first three save the old version, and you can restore it from History. Regenerated archetypes replace the old set for good.
Change the plan, brief or measurement
These three can't be regenerated. Edit them directly, or change an answer on Assumptions and accept the fixes it suggests.
History
Each section's History lists every time the toolkit generated it. It doesn't record your own edits.
Part 4 · Telling us what's wrong
Tell us where it's wrong
At the bottom of each section, How was this report? takes a thumbs up or down and a comment. Many sections also ask How's this section? partway down, and the Overview lets you rate every report in one place. For bugs, ideas or anything else, use the coral EddyDesk button in the bottom-left corner of every page.
From the Upswell team
The most useful note says what you expected instead. "Too vague" tells us something is wrong. "I'd want 'get five videos ready before launch' here" tells us how to fix it.
Mark what's good, too. The sections people rate well are the ones future drafts learn from.
Not available yet
- Translating a campaign into local languages is switched off while we fix it.
- Coach lessons can be drafted but can't reach workers' phones yet.
Something here wrong or out of date? Tell us with the EddyDesk button, bottom left of any page in the toolkit.