Based across five counties in Appalachian North Carolina, High Country Community Health is a federally funded group of community health centers working to bring better and more accessible care to a region historically lacking in adequate health services.
The Challenge
By the Summer of 2023, a gap had widened between the public’s attention and dedication to COVID-19 precautions, and the continued need for vaccinations. The existential threat had seemingly subsided and many people were either unaware or uninterested in new vaccines. This challenge was even more acute in areas like Appalachia where a distrust of COVID vaccine efforts permeated the region. The federal government believed that localized community health centers could be a bridge to more marginalized, harder-to-reach populations, and tapped HCCH and others around the country to drive that effort.
However, each health center still had the challenge of determining exactly how to do that. Compounding societal disinterest was a brand awareness problem. Founded in 2010, HCCH still needed to continue to build on their credibility and familiarity within the local communities they served. This campaign, though, could serve as an opportunity to both drive awareness of HCCH and increase vaccination rates simultaneously.
The Approach
Knowing that this campaign would fall on an uninterested, potentially antagonistic audience, it was decided that a simple, straightforward approach was best. It was time to be blunt. To cut through the noise, and call out how people were really feeling three years into COVID-19.
A series of three short questions and answers would make up the entirety of the headlines. Each acknowledges people’s weariness with the entire COVID-19 world and asks them to simply get vaccine boosters in response. Understanding that many now saw the pandemic as annoying, rather than life-threatening, the tone was part playful, part sarcastic. The campaign tapped into the exasperation most of our audience was feeling, imparting our viewers with a chuckle, instead of an eye roll. Secondary and tertiary messaging provided the relevant details
The message was paired with an equally simple design, split down the middle by two colors, with plenty of white space to call attention to the headlines. This would help outdoor and social media stand out from the visual clutter typical to highways or phone screens, creating a memorable campaign that would also position HCCH as the go-to health resource in the region.
The Results
Delivering nearly 6,000,000 impressions across the region utilizing a mix of traditional and digital mediums, this campaign was on a scale never undertaken before by HCCH. It put the brand in front of a variety of new audiences and served as a foundation for future efforts and campaigns.
The campaign drove a significant amount of traffic to the COVID-19 vaccine landing page, totaling 15% of their overall site traffic during the campaign flight dates. With 87% of the traffic coming from unique visitors, indicating a brand new audience was not only seeing the ads, but being driven to action by them.
