Background: In response to COVID-19, a regional health system quickly pivoted their advertising efforts to prevent any additional, non-essential foot traffic to their facilities. Marketing Doctor halted all service line campaigns within minutes! With quick turnaround, Marketing Doctor launched several campaigns to effectively communicate safety information and updated protocol amid the start and peak of the pandemic. These campaigns primarily focused on  wearing masks, social distancing, sanitizing hands and surfaces, appreciation for frontline workers, COVID-19 testing centers, and Blood Donation Drive (urgent need). These campaigns adapted to reach niche markets as surges in cases occurred.

Upon learning that a specific Russian-speaking community in Massachusetts was experiencing an outbreak, the regional hospital system’s Diversity and Inclusion Team developed an ad in the community’s primary language. The ad would provide appropriate awareness and education materials to at-risk residents.

Approach: While language barriers can pose a challenge to getting messages to certain  demographics or target audiences, our team has experience eliminating that barrier. We crafted a COVID-19 safety campaign to reach the older Russian-speaking community for our client.

Solution: Our Media Planning team identified all relevant locations within the community, the locations’ social media pages, and other interests specific to the community. We spoke with community leaders for on-the-ground insights and ultimately found the best value for the budget. On social media, we placed a higher budget behind specific zip codes for the areas most at-risk.

Results: We placed informational COVID-19 ads in Russian in a local publication, which is popular among the primary community. It was also best for reaching the older age groups we needed to see the content in Russian.