COVID-19 VACCINE AWARENESS CAMPAIGN
With a $3.4 million budget and a 3+ year contract, I led the development and execution of a comprehensive communications and outreach strategy for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our multi-faceted campaigns aimed to connect with the communities hardest hit by the pandemic and spanned out-of-home, print, digital, social media, streaming, radio, and video. By collaborating with major media outlets like the LA Times and targeted niche publications such as Los Angeles Sentinel, Siam Town, LA Chinese Daily News, LA Opinion, LA Downtown News, and Spectrum News, we aimed to expand community outreach and ensure we reached audiences often overlooked and discounted by traditional media.
OVERVIEW
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health launched a multi-year initiative to promote vaccine awareness and safety across one of the most diverse cities in the United States. To reach the county’s varied population, the initiative was divided into targeted campaigns, each addressing specific aspects of the pandemic.
I developed the visual and creative campaigns to create a comprehensive and dynamic response, effectively promoting safety and vaccination awareness across Los Angeles during a critical time. These efforts not only supported immediate public health goals but also laid the groundwork for ongoing community health initiatives.
REDISCOVER LOS ANGELES
I developed the Rediscover Los Angeles campaign in 2021 as part of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s initiative to encourage Angelenos to safely re-engage with their city and communities. The campaign’s visual language and imagery were designed to emphasize the importance of reconnecting with the community while maintaining health and safety. By inspiring residents to rediscover neighborhoods, businesses, and iconic locations they had missed, the campaign positioned vaccinations and safety measures as essential steps toward returning to normalcy. Developed through extensive research and community engagement, the campaign aimed to humanize the experience of coming back together, positioning the Department of Public Health as a trusted partner in the safety and well-being of the community.
We engaged with Board offices, Community Health Workers and Community Based Organizations to identify institutions to highlight and promote as a part of this campaign. This campaign’s visual and messaging aimed to humanize the experience of coming back together as a community once the “shelter-in-place” orders were lifted. The goal was to ensure the LA County Department of Public Health is seen as a partner in the safety and well-being of communities.
This comprehensive campaign featured billboards, bus shelters, PSAs, and print, digital, and social media materials, all carefully translated into the twelve most common languages (Armenian, Simple Chinese, Traditional Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Spanish, Tagalog, Thai, and Vietnamese) in Los Angeles to ensure the message resonated with the city’s diverse population.
I’M VACCINATED BECAUSE…
The I’m Vaccinated Because… campaign built on top of the previous campaign and featured trusted community members and leaders sharing their personal reasons for getting vaccinated, aiming to inspire others through relatable and credible voices. This campaign highlighted short personal messages from trusted messengers in communities with lower vaccination rates, telling stories of shared values, future vision, and community strength. By amplifying the voices of often underrepresented communities, it connected with individuals who share these values but had not yet made their decision.
We captured video interviews and evocative portraits of community leaders and members to convey strength and trust, using these images across social media, Out-Of-Home billboards, bus shelters, shareable short-form videos, and streaming and radio PSAs.
The campaign consisted of 29 individual and family stories, across five languages of English, Spanish, Thai, Chinese, and American Sign Language, as well as all campaign materials were meticulously translated into the seven most common languages spoken in Los Angeles to ensure accessibility and inclusivity. This approach allowed us to reach a broader audience, reflecting the city’s diverse cultural landscape and ensuring that the message resonated with all community members, regardless of language barriers.
KNOW THE FACTS
The Know The Facts campaign aimed to dispel myths and provide up-to-date, accurate, science-backed information about COVID-19 and vaccines, helping to combat misinformation and build trust within the community.
To emphasize the legitimacy of this information, the social campaign was designed to be shared directly from the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health’s social media accounts, reinforcing trust and credibility. Each post was carefully crafted to address common misinformation and controversial topics circulating online. To maximize effectiveness, I broke down complex issues into bite-sized, shareable posts, ensuring the content was accessible and easy to disseminate.
COVID DIARIES
In partnership with Community Health Councils and the Department of Public Health, I developed a series to highlight the amazing fortitude and outstanding work the Community Health Work do on a daily basis during the COVID-19 pandemic. We interviewed and filmed their daily lives to humanize the pandemic and showcase these hardworking and brave individuals. We created with 18 videos in the COVID Diaries series and featured 6 organizations and 8 participants across three languages of English, Spanish, and Thai.
EVERYDAY SAFE
Recognizing the messaging fatigue surrounding vaccines and boosters over the past two years, I developed the Everyday Safe campaign as an umbrella initiative for all future messaging for the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health. The campaign emphasizes the everyday actions we take to protect ourselves, our families, and our communities, initially linking these behaviors with vaccines and boosters to make them a natural part of daily life. With a strong focus on visuals, the campaign transcends language and literacy barriers, ensuring its message resonates with diverse communities across the county.
Everyday Safe aims to normalize critical health measures, encouraging residents to view vaccines as commonplace as wearing a helmet or buckling a seatbelt. Through relatable imagery depicting individuals in their daily lives—paired with contrasting band-aids as a symbol of vaccination—the campaign subtly integrates vaccines into the narrative of everyday safety.
As a comprehensive approach to departmental messaging, Everyday Safe has been adapted to various public health priorities. It provides a unified platform for addressing a wide range of health issues, including Monkeypox safety, flu vaccines, access to resources, wellness communities, sexual health, exercise, heat advisories, community outreach, and harm reduction measures. The campaign can seamlessly pivot to highlight emerging priorities, such as fall bivalent vaccines or masking recommendations, while maintaining a consistent and familiar message.
In essence, the Everyday Safe campaign redefines public health messaging by embedding it into the fabric of daily life, ensuring that safety and health are ever-present, approachable, and relevant for all residents of Los Angeles County.
SUPER BOWL 2022
Since the 2022 Super Bowl was to be held in Los Angeles, I created a multi-prong, dual language campaign in partnership with the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health to spread awareness and promote a “Safe Game Plan” for gathering. The campaign objective was to minimize the spread of COVID-19 that the County was anticipating for the first Los Angeles Super Bowl. With tourists arriving from all over the country and beyond, and local bars, restaurants, and homes anticipating huge numbers of crowds, the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health wanted a campaign to capture the spirit of celebration and competition with positive enforcement of safety measures, for an audience that had severe COVID-19 messaging fatigue. I chose to illustrate this through iconic football and Los Angeles imagery recognizable to both locals and football fans.
The 2022 Super Bowl campaign included OOH, Radio and Streaming PSAs, Print, and Digital Media. In coordination with the NFL, digital ads were placed and utilized at the in-person NFL Super Bowl experience locations. A total of 20 digital out-of-home boards were secured, 25 digital ads, 9 print ads, and 246 radio spots ran in target areas and on social media during the week before Super Bowl Sunday. The campaign yielded over 9.5MM impressions in a little over a week.
REACTION
Over the course of 3 years, our efforts have garnered over 185 million out-of-home impressions, 2.2 million social media impressions, and 12 million PSA and radio impressions across multiple campaigns. These campaigns were conducted in seven languages—English, Spanish, Tagalog, Traditional Chinese, Korean, and Armenian—utilizing a diverse mix of print, radio, digital, mobile, video, social media, out-of-home, and earned media components.