There are so many ‘please help’ ads. So creative agency, Don’t Panic, created something rather different.

17,000 children under five are dying every day from easily preventable causes like malaria and diarrhoea, and suffering from poor-to-non-existent access to medicines and skilled health workers. Save the Children needs funds to help them. But it is not the only aid organisation asking people donate to its cause.

Awareness campaigns that go viral are London creative agency, Don’t Panic’s, area of expertise. It’s previous work for Save the Children, The Most Shocking Second-a-Day video about the war in Syria has had 34,946,05 YouTube views. It also won a Gold Cyber Lion at Cannes and, just yesterday, was awarded a Gold Lovie for Public Service and Activism (as well as Best Individual Performance for the video’s young star).

And Don’t Panic’s viral video for Greenpeace, Everything is NOT Awesome, helped end LEGO’s 50-year, £60M relationship with Shell Oil.

It was likely that the Don’t Panic would find an intriguing way to make people pay attention, learn and help.

And it has. Superheroes doesn’t look like an ad. It looks like a documentary. The film follows a group of filmmakers investigating multiple sightings of superhero figures. The crew travels the globe, from Mexico to Kenya to India, documenting the curious stories of young boys and girls who claim to have been saved by these mysterious heroes. Its subjects are real children, not actors, supported by Save the Children’s international work and filmed in their real life settings.

It was filmed on three continents within a week. Jacob Proud, one of the two UNIT9 directors who made the film (the other was Greg Hardes) stated that is was the “toughest but most rewarding shoot we’ve ever done.”

“The key to this project was the imagination of the kids. It was important that we only planted the seed of a story in their minds, and then let them run away with it. It was such a cultural contrast – in Mexico, the kids had no concept of “superheroes” in the way that we think of them, so It was about working with translators to get the nuances right. In Kenya the kids were incredible artists; we got them to draw their impressions of a superhero and some of their pictures blew us away. The Indian children were all Bollywood stars in the making; they loved being in front of the camera and needed no encouragement to perform. And, of course, none of this would have been possible without the enthusiasm of Save the Children staff on the ground.“

The film was released at the launch of Save the Children’s annual global campaign, Race for Survival, and the UN International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, on October 17^th. At this event, thousands of children in over 50 countries took to the streets in organised running races, to help amplify the voices of millions living in the world’s most unforgiving environments.

Richard Beer, creative director of Don’t Panic, commented, “Just surviving every day as a child in some of the world’s poorest places requires almost superhuman effort. Save The Children are doing everything they can, but the world needs more superheroes who are willing to fight for these children’s lives. We hope this video will be their call to action.”