On the heels of a successful flu shot campaign the previous year, the Virginia Department of Health wanted to continue to use the Miss the Flu brand and direct people to the campaign website. But because the Miss the Flu campaign was originally designed to reach millennials reluctant to get their flu shot, none of the existing creative was applicable to a campaign targeting Virginia parents and budget was far too limited to create another live action, broadcast ready video spot.
We took on the challenge of developing a totally new digital marketing campaign, under the same name.
A 2015 CDC report on flu vaccination coverage revealed that while most parents make sure their children get a flu shot, less than half remember to get one for themselves. The same report showed that while Hispanic adults have the lowest influenza vaccination rates in the country at (35% versus 43% overall), Hispanic children had higher flu vaccination rates (64.2%) than other kids.
State health officials noticed a similar trend in Virginia and contracted with VANCE to create a bilingual digital marketing campaign increase flu vaccination rates among Virginia adults, especially parents.
To keep costs down, we proposed a targeted online, animated video campaign (designed by Photoelectric) to motivate English and Spanish-speaking parents to make sure the whole family — not just the kids- get their flu shot this season.
Because women tend to make most of the family health decisions, we decided to take VDH’s message directly to “mom.” Both videos feature a child thanking his mother for all she does and conveys these 3 points:
While the general message was the same for both the English and Spanish-speaking audiences, we partnered with Latino Link Advisors to help ensure the video was culturally relevant to our Hispanic audiences. For example, since the majority of Virginia’s foreign-born Hispanics were born in El Salvador, Mexico, Peru, Bolivia and Guatemala we narrowed our pool of voiceover talent to native speakers from those countries. These considerations also influenced the language used, including the tagline. “Miss the Flu” does not translate well into Spanish (“Pierda la gripe” sounds weird). Instead, we advised a revised tagline centered around collectivistic culture: “Hazlo por ti, hazlo por toda la familia” (Do it for you, do it for your family). This statement is aligned with the family theme and also implies “Go Get the Whole Family Vaccinated” a collectivistic message more likely to resonate with Hispanic families.
Since the Miss the Flu (2.0) bilingual digital marketing campaign first launched in 2015, the YouTube videos have been watched well over 100,000 times and attracted tens of thousands to the campaign page for information on where to get a flu shot.
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