State of Illinois COVID Immigrant & Refugee Awareness Campaign

In 2020, immigrants and refugees in Illinois were disproportionately suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Latine community had a positivity rate nearly double that of all other races/ethnicities. Lack of resources, trust and information created barriers to testing for immigrants and refugees. We won this state contract, managed a suite of subcontractors, and developed a statewide outreach campaign in 17 languages tailored to immigrant and refugee communities.

17 Language

Multimedia statewide public information and outreach campaign executed at height of pandemic

40 million

Generated on mpressions on TV, digital and radio

120

Distinct culturally competent assets created to communicate to immigrant and refugee families across five cultures

Services

THE CHALLENGE

The Illinois Department of Human Services needs to immediately launch a statewide media and outreach campaign to empower the hardest hit communities in their native languages.

THE SOLUTION

Developed a multi-layered marketing campaign that included Paid Media, Earned Media, Community Engagement, Outreach to Business, Organic Social Media, Translation, and a Mail, Text, and Robo program.

Worked with a $2.5 million budget, and established a team of minority-owned subcontractors.

4 month timeframe start-to-finish

THE IMPACT

Hosted six listening sessions with 116 community representatives to gather culturally specific qualitative feedback to complement COVID-19 data.

Worked with the creative team to develop “Nuestra Salud es Nuestra Mayor Riqueza.” or “Your Health is Your Greatest Wealth.” to evoke a sense of community wealth, of togetherness, of a shared abundance.

TV and radio

Over 13.5 million impressions in Spanish and Polish

Digital

Over 28 million digital impressions with nearly 96,000 clicks. Digital videos were watched to completion over 3.6 million times.

Local business marketing collateral

Over 50,000 masks and safety info were delivered to 5,600 businesses across 10 of Chicago’s zip codes with the highest infection rate

Out of Home (OOH)

120 assets in Spanish, Polish, Chinese, Arabic & Urdu

Community

Marketing collateral – Over 15,000 branded PPE kits distributed with masks, sanitizer, wipes & fliers

Facebook

Page views increased by 111%, Facebook posts reached over 2.7 million people (an increase of 37%), and there were over 274,000 engagements with Facebook posts (an increase of 28%)