The Background
COVID-19 vaccine awareness and education among Latinos is one of the greatest public health challenges our country has ever faced. With the amount of disinformation surrounding the virus, many hard-to-reach audiences with limited access to quality healthcare and publicly available information needed reassurance that vaccine use would not result in negative health or financial repercussions. UnidosUS launched an education and awareness campaign backed by funding from several advocacy partners, including AARP, to disseminate culturally appropriate information on the COVID-19 vaccine. Sensis was brought on as UnidosUS’ key marketing partner to foster trust in the vaccine’s safety and efficacy to increase potential vaccine participation among all hard-to-reach Latinos in 2021. It was crucial that the effort placed a strong emphasis on older Latino adults as this demographic was the most vulnerable when the pandemic started.
The Challenges
Reach Latinos through an experiential activation campaign that connects and educates the community about the importance of the COVID-19 vaccines
Offer trusted information on the safety, validity, and importance of the vaccines in order to diminishes vaccine hesitancy
Drive traffic to vaccination centers
The Solutions
Given the difficulty of increasing nationwide awareness of vaccines among a particularly hard-to-reach audience, Sensis developed a three-pronged campaign including traditional advertising, influencer marketing, and a six-week mobile tour earned media effort. All of our efforts began with comprehensive audience research in order to determine which tactics would be most effective, making full use of both our suite of syndicated research tools as well as our proprietary research studies on Hispanic audiences.
For our traditional advertising effort, Sensis was tasked with reaching Hispanic audiences across the country in both English and Spanish. Based on our multicultural strategy developed in our Discovery phase, our creative team developed multilingual branded elements for Out-of-Home, Digital, and Paid Social, revolving around the creative message of “Esperanza – Hope for All”. Media tactics include non-traditional OOH (lunch trucks and storefronts), digital banner ads, paid social, and paid search.
For our influencer marketing effort, our Amplification team selected a wide group of influencers and developed an ongoing list of over 160 people we are currently engaging – with a heavier emphasis on relevant Latino influencers that reach both Spanish-dominant and bilingual Latinos. These individuals have one thing in common: they are influential to their social communities and care about the well-being of the community. Some have the credentials to speak about vaccines and create awareness as they have received the vaccines, and others help ease hesitancy and promote the importance of it. All of these individuals have been thoroughly vetted to confirm that their brand, beliefs, and social presence align with the campaign messaging and organization values that UnidosUS represents. We provided them with UnidosUS-approved influencer toolkits that included:
Key talking points
Style guide for posts
Suggestions for cultural identifiers such as slang, musical references, mementos, etc.
Graphics for carousel posts so our partners can share a homogenous message on their social channels
All influencer activities were rigorously tracked and monitored for KPIs including impressions, reach, shares, and clicks across multiple platforms. This data was used to inform further optimizations and insights for future content and was presented to client staff through monthly meetings.
For our mobile tour marketing effort, our team delivered in-language UnidosUS vaccine messaging to hard-to-reach Hispanic audiences more likely to be affected by the pandemic. A six-week mobile tour educational campaign was executed (three 10-hour days per week) in key target markets: Houston, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Rio Grande Valley, El Paso, Phoenix, Yuma/Coachella, Fresno/Stockton. Throughout the tour, our team handed out vaccine fact sheets, letting people know where to go in their area for a vaccine, and engaging safely with the public through community soccer games. For our efforts, Sensis created a branded booth, branded merchandise (including face masks and t-shirts), vehicle wrap and soccer assets. We are reaching our market at flea markets, retail strip centers and Walmarts.
The Outcomes
Our campaign was a roaring success that has produced over 26M digital impressions, 4.8M paid social impressions, 31,000 mobile tour impressions, and 19.8M earned media impressions. To date, UnidosUS's comprehensive efforts have reached more than 24 million individuals. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 73% of U.S. Latino adults say they've received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine as of September. Indeed, the Hispanic adult population had among the largest increases in vaccine uptake between July and September, exactly the dates we were in market.
Agency: Sensis