We built the Let's Talk About It campaign to encourage a reluctant community to reconsider COVID-19 vaccinations.
As summer 2021 was ending, the state of Arkansas reported the third lowest COVID-19 vaccination rate in the country, with under 36% of residents having received both doses. With COVID-19 infections surging across the state, Arkansas Children’s started to see child infection rates greater than they’d seen at any point during the pandemic. Driven to deliver “unprecedented child health,” Arkansas Children’s knew it was time to get vocal about vaccinations and actively engage their communities. They looked to Core for support.
Our research showed 20% of people were somewhat or very open to reconsidering receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. These individuals were cautious about the vaccine but would be more open to it if their needs and questions were to be addressed. This "moveable middle" became the target audience in our strategic approach: encouraging people to engage in conversations with their healthcare providers about vaccinations.
Research also showed that piling on more facts would be unhelpful and using fear could turn them off from listening. Our focus with mass communications was to approach our audience with empathy, persuading people to talk with their providers about their questions. We crafted empathetic messaging to help our audience feel seen, heard, and safe. The risks of not being vaccinated would be highlighted in trusted one-on-one provider-patient communication.
We drove the campaign with a unifying call-to-action that embodied these strategies: "Let's talk about it."
For the vaccine-cautious, receiving information from healthcare providers — in particular, their own — can make a significant impact. We equipped providers at Arkansas Children’s with the tools to facilitate conversations with parents about COVID-19 and the vaccines.
Working with clinical experts at Arkansas Children’s, we developed fundamental key messaging and comprehensive, easy-to-read Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) that would live on their website and guide all communications. We made internal engagement a priority, developing:
We developed digital content for targeted, contextually relevant websites and included native articles providing deeper explorations of parents’ concerns, like specifics around new variants and getting kids back to school safely.
Social media prompts furthered the connection we sought to create with our audience, asking people about their questions and concerns, while always driving them back to the Arkansas Children's website for answers.
Digital billboards placed throughout the system's key markets also shared our empathetic conversation starter, encouraging people to visit the Arkansas Children’s website to get their questions answered.
We also used radio and TV to take a more educational approach, selecting a well-known Arkansas Children’s pediatrician to deliver our message — an invitation to speak with a real physician — in a warm, empathetic way.
Within the first month of launch, audiences engaged with our digital content at an above-average level, sparking a 300% increase in calls to Arkansas Children's and a 1,000% increase in Facebook audience size.
In approximately three months, we garnered more than 180 million impressions, serving our primary goal of generating awareness. In 2021, statewide vaccination rates increased by more than 18% since the campaign launched — with Arkansas nearing the national average.
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