Since the first Virginian caught COVID-19 in 2020, helping to stop its spread felt personal. Our neighbors, friends, and families were at risk, and Reingold was in a position to spread the word that lives could be saved. It doesn’t get more fundamental than that. So when the Virginia Department of Health asked us to help deliver messages about vaccines, boosters, and safety measures, we focused our efforts as if lives depended on it — because they did.
To educate vaccine-hesitant audiences, we created this Viddy Award-winning video about the long history of vaccine safety in partnership with Duke & Duck.
Reingold’s innovative marketing and media campaign helped VDH respond to the most challenging health crisis of our lifetime. We produced more than 900 pieces of collateral in the fourth quarter of 2021 alone — helping to spread the word about boosters, vaccines for children, ways to safely celebrate the holidays, and resources for navigating the surge of cases from the omicron variant. The ethos of our campaign: Keep Virginia Moving Forward.
We began supporting VDH in the fall of 2021, as the major vaccination pushes were winding down amid growing public fatigue with pandemic messaging. We helped VDH move into a new, more targeted approach, creating a wide range of communications to appeal to distinct audiences — rural, Spanish-speaking, Black, and faith-based communities, as well as parents of young children, families of long-term care residents, and health care providers.
We also layered on targeted efforts to support particularly vulnerable populations. These efforts included work with VDH, the Virginia Department of Medical Assistance Services, and managed care organizations to support Virginia’s Medicaid beneficiaries, whose vaccination rate lagged 30 percentage points below that of the general population.
We worked with VDH to translate complex medical information into creative concepts that are easy to understand, likening getting a booster to putting on a jacket in the winter or adding a layer of sunscreen in the summer. We produced videos featuring trusted local messengers, satellite media tours with VDH experts, and multimedia ads that captured evolving vaccine guidance — in nine languages.
By May 2022, our billboards, broadcast ads, and social media animations garnered more than 700 million total impressions, 95 million video views, and 580,000 website clicks. In addition, 82% of Virginians had received at least one dose of the vaccine and 73% were fully vaccinated, making the state one the nation’s most successful in persuading people to take this lifesaving action.
The campaign targeting Virginia’s Medicaid beneficiaries also proved successful. In the first three months of 2022, that population’s vaccination rate increased by more than 5 percentage points.
