The longer version: When the vaccine arrived, the state of California knew it was going to have to do some education work to get it where it needed to go: in arms. As a state with an economy and population equal to many other nations, this was no small task. 

We activated a team many dozens strong to handle everything from the media buys, to campaign strategy, to messaging architecture, to paid and organic social. We found agency partners who could help us talk to every member of our state in their native language, rally people on the ground and on the air, and drum up the PR and news coverage we needed to get our message out.

What resulted was the Let’s Get to Immunity campaign. A campaign that strove to meet people where they were, with empathy and understanding, to help them get the answers they need to make the decision about what’s right for them. This is the type of campaign that requires hundreds of people working together to bring it to life. And we did. And there is no doubt that it helped. 

As time went on, we shifted our content weights from a heavy focus on education to a heavy focus on individual stories. As people became more knowledgeable about the vaccine, they were less swayed by informative content. Responding to this, we shifted our focus to testimonials and Q&A sessions with real people giving their real points of view.  

Californians felt heard—leading to significant results across all facets of the campaign. In an extremely crowded space, “Let’s get to immunity” had notably high awareness (61%). And Californians with high exposure to our campaign were 98% more likely to have gotten their first dose by the time we ran our tracking study. Meaning our campaign actually helped save lives.