Freestyle Creative had the opportunity to partner with the Oklahoma City-County Health Department (OCCHD) and Gooden Group for “Choose Today,” an informative campaign about the FDA-authorized COVID-19 vaccine, encouraging residents of Oklahoma County to make an informed decision about receiving the vaccine.

Situation
OCCHD recognized that many residents of Oklahoma County needed help becoming informed about the best decision for themselves or helping family and friends make a decision about becoming vaccinated.

Goals
Motivate unvaccinated Oklahoma County residents to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, with a primary focus on OCCHD’s target populations, in order to limit community spread and improve overall public health outcomes.
Reinforce the critical role that OCCHD plays in educating and providing resources to Oklahoma County.
Emphasize the importance of receiving a second dose and booster vaccines.

Strategy
We partnered with Amber Integrated to conduct a pre-campaign survey to identify the creative direction and appropriate target audiences. From this research, the following target audiences were identified:
– Males, ages 30-50
– Parents/guardians of children ages 5-11
– Vaccinated residents eligible for boosters

Specific strategies and specialized messaging were developed for each audience. We created a recognizable logo for consistency across each asset and used images that would resonate with each audience, altering copy to speak to respective goals.

Placement
“Choose Today” was a campaign all about reach, with the ultimate goal to drive Oklahoma County residents to VaxOKC.com to make an informed decision about becoming vaccinated. To achieve maximum reach, a traditional and digital media mix was created including:
– Multiple billboard designs to appeal to all target audiences
– Various spot placements on broadcast stations
– Direct mail piece for likely unvaccinated residents
– Posters with OCCHD’s vaccination hotline and/or website
– Facebook ads with detailed targeting, varying audience messaging
– Programmatic placement for various videos

Results
When the campaign proposal was submitted, the vaccination rate in Oklahoma County was 45.9%. At the end of the three-month campaign, 82.1% of residents had received at least one dose of the vaccine, and 64.6% were fully vaccinated.

Through our social media campaign:
– A 55% increase in traffic to VaxOKC.com was tracked in just the first week alone.
– We saw positive trends in overall web traffic through the remainder of the campaign with a significant decrease in bounce rate. 
– During the campaign, over 90% of the web traffic was due to new visitors, while less than 10% were returning visitors.

Amber Integrated conducted a post-campaign survey similar to the initial survey for research and found:
40% of Oklahoma County residents recalled seeing an ad from OCCHD within the past 90 days.
Of these 40%, 10% said it changed their perspective of the vaccine.
28% said the advertisements gave them a more favorable view of OCCHD.