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Prior to and during the annual flu season, the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) needed to spread the word to all North Carolinians about the importance of getting an annual flu vaccination. DHHS turned to Avenir Bold and their expertise in the healthcare and social issues marketing space to help them create a unique and creative mass media campaign.

• To increase public awareness of the importance of getting vaccinated for the flu
• To increase the number of North Carolina residents who receive a flu vaccination
• To help prevent the flu and its spread in North Carolina

When it comes to the flu and flu vaccination, there is a significant lack of knowledge surrounding the virus, the vaccine, and the effects of both. Avenir Bold’s challenge with this campaign was not only to inform, but also to overcome the beliefs and fears keeping people from taking steps to protect their health and the health of others.

In addition, we needed to make sure the campaign translated well across multiple paid media tactics and in various markets around the state. DHHS also wanted a solution that could easily be refreshed and have the longevity to resonate with audiences over the course of three years.

DHHS identified four key audience segments to target for their campaign:

• Women – the primary healthcare decision makers for their families and who are most likely to ensure family vaccination.
• Seniors – who are most vulnerable to the fatal effects of the flu.
• African-Americans – who are less likely to get the flu vaccination when compared to other ethnicities.
• Healthcare Workers – who, given their occupations, are surprisingly skeptical about getting a flu vaccination.

Following a fair amount of desktop research into each target audience, Avenir Bold conducted a series of focus groups to better understand the reasons why some people avoid getting their annual flu vaccine. We also wanted to determine what kinds of messaging would have the most impact in convincing people to get vaccinated against the flu each year.

Armed with our focus group data, Avenir Bold drafted a messaging matrix to identify the specific messaging points to inform and incorporate into our creative approach.

Based on our research, we identified four main reasons why people avoid vaccination:

• Time – being too busy with other obligations to get vaccinated.
• Invincibility – thinking the flu vaccine is not needed because one lives a healthy lifestyle or has never gotten sick with the flu.
• Skepticism – believing the flu vaccine is ineffective at preventing the flu.
• Fear – of getting sick or getting the flu from the vaccine.

Avenir Bold created “Meet the Shot Dodgers” – an entertaining and engaging way to identify and debunk the reasons for avoiding flu vaccination, or colloquially speaking, a flu shot. We created funny personas to represent the key insights we’d uncovered, and affectionately labeled them the “Shot Dodgers.” We wanted the audience to identify with and be entertained by the personas, while receiving the key message loud and clear: “Don’t be a Shot Dodger!” Why? Because, shot dodgers who avoid the flu vaccine, set themselves up for a direct hit from the flu.

“Meet the Shot Dodgers” evolved into a multi-pronged marketing strategy driven primarily by a series of television commercials. Our main commercial served as an overall introduction to our four characters, while subsequent shorter commercials focused on a specific character and his/her quirks.

In addition to television, Avenir Bold also created social media ads on Facebook, digital banners, a flu awareness landing page as well as internal and external posters. We even created stickers that DHHS could distribute at public events and vaccination locations. Campaign elements were also translated into various content marketing pieces including an infographic of factoids negating each persona’s reason for avoiding the flu vaccine.

To extend the campaign’s reach even further, a handful of the creative executions were translated to appeal to and persuade primarily, Spanish- speaking audiences.

“Meet the Shot Dodgers” launched statewide in late October 2017. As of December 31, 2017, the digital and social media campaign had generated over 11 million impressions and resulted in over 22K clicks to the flu.nc.gov website. Digital versions of the campaign commercials had received over 667K impressions with an average video completion rate of 73%.

With “Meet the Shot Dodgers,” DHHS was able to speak directly to their target audiences in a charming, but informative way. They also gained an effective tool to help disarm excuses and persuade North Carolinians to protect themselves and others by getting vaccinated.