As the Covid-19 vaccine becomes more widely available, well known companies ranging from tech giants to beer brands are rolling out public service announcements to encourage people to get their shot.
This past week, The Boston Beer Company debuted a new Sam Adams campaign promoting the vaccine featuring the brand’s “Cousin From Boston” character. The ad—created by the advertising agency Goodby, Silverstein and Partners—shows the “Cousin” getting vaccinated by a real healthcare worker at Fenway Park’s mega site. But right before getting his jab, he passes out from his fear of needles and dreams of the day he can once again meet up with friends at a bar. (Sam Adams is also offering $7 toward a celebratory beer to the first 10,000 people to share proof of vaccination with the hashtag #ShotForSam on social media.)
According to GS&P cofounder Jeff Goodby—the legendary creative behind the iconic “Got Milk” campaign and countless Super Bowl ads—humor is a good way to reach younger audiences, especially after a year as emotionally draining as 2020.
“What humor did for me is say it’s just an inoculation,” Goodby says. “We’ve had millions of them in our lifetime, but this one is actually good for the good as well as for yourself, and I think we tried to get that across. And it leads to a certain liberation and togetherness. And beer of course, is central to togetherness. One of the great things about getting inoculated is you can drink beer with people.”
While Sam Adams went with humor, it wasn’t without first testing the ad to make sure it would be well-received, despite the serious nature of the topic, says Boston Beer Company CMO Lesya Lysyj. Before introducing the “Cousin” last year, Sam Adams had been taking a more serious tone, even before the pandemic began.
“We felt like it was important to show him showing it since he’s so relatable,” Lysyj says. “And if that guy can do it, anybody can do it . . . We did feel like you could put yourself in the shoes of this guy.”
Sam Adams isn’t alone in its messaging. In fact The Ad Council—a nonprofit with a long history of collaborating with marketers to create PSAs for a variety of causes—has raised more than $50 million to fund Covid-19 PSAs and other related initiatives with a goal of appealing to a wide audience. To promote mask-wearing, it teamed up with Warner Media and the CDC in February for “Mask Up America,” a PSA featuring characters—from Harry Potter to the Joker to hobbits from Lord of the Rings—all wearing face masks in iconic scenes. And in March, it released a vaccine PSA featuring former Presidents Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and George Bush.
Heidi Arthur, the Ad Council’s chief campaign officer, says the Covid-19 vaccine effort is the most complicated initiative undertaken by the organization, which also led polio vaccine efforts in the 1950s.
“The amount of change can happen so quickly as the medical community learns more about the efficacy of vaccines and making sure that all of our messages and the content we’re creating is really where the science is because it can get very confusing for people with the flip of a switch,” she says.
While research has shown that vaccines created by Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson are safe and effective, some segments of the population remain unwilling. A survey of 1,000 U.S. adults conducted by Nielsen last month found that 52% of respondents had received at least one dose, had scheduled an appointment or had registered to receive the vaccine upon becoming eligible, but 26% were still uncertain about getting their shot, and one fifth didn’t plan to get vaccinated. Many of the undecided were younger, women or hispanic.
Nafeez Zawahir, chief medical officer at Razorfish Health, points out that it’s also important to distinguish between those who are anti-vaccine and those who are vaccine-hesitant. He says marketers need to do a better job of acknowledging that hesitancy, especially in minority communities that have experienced systemic racism and discrimination within the healthcare system.
“If I simply tell you, even in a paternalist way, that this vaccine is good and say you need to take it, and you’re hesitant and I don’t address you in a way that acknowledges that problem you might have, that’s a failure and a failing we haven’t really addressed,” he says.
Some medical experts believe vaccine messaging has been focused on the wrong things. Lee Fraser, chief medical officer of Digitas Health, says a lot of early marketing efforts were focused on selling individual protection rather than the benefits for everyone. He thinks that even those not worried about getting Covid-19 may be inclined to get the vaccine if it means being reunited with family and friends.
“The thing about marketing a vaccine is it’s always gone down the path of, ‘Hey there’s this scary pathogen and there’s a vaccine you should take it and it’ll make you feel safe,’” Fraser says. “And what that sets up is a dismissible proposition. Say, is the risk great enough that I need to take this vaccine and it becomes almost dismissible.”
Budweiser’s PSA taps into this sentiment. Also released on Wednesday—which happened to be National Beer Day and World Health Day—the brand’s ad makes good on a pledge it made earlier this year to redirect the money it would have typically spent on a Super Bowl ad toward the vaccination efforts, including the ongoing Ad Council campaign.
Set to a Jimmy Durante cover of Billie Holiday’s classic “I’ll Be Seeing You”—a song that’s been used in three distinct vaccine PSAs in the past month—Budweiser’s ad features a montage of moments of people coming together for a beer in a post-pandemic world. Monica Mody, vice president of marketing at Budweiser U.S., says the budget is “on part with any of our other cultural moment campaigns.”
“It’s a certain sense of joy,” Mody says. “It’s the small subtleties of one person at the center of the camera that’s smiling, or the picture of the Bud cans with cards on the table. It’s those small things you can remember back to pre-Covid life. And it’s just to stark some joy that the end is near right upon us.”
This sort of emotion is critical to persuading people to get the vaccine, says Bunny Ellerin, director of the healthcare and pharmaceutical management program at Columbia Business School.
“There’s never been a rollout of scale like this nor has there ever been so much light shed on people who may not want to take the vaccine or may not trust it,” she says.
Google also recently released a sentimental new spot. Called “Get Back To What You Love,” the ad shows a variety of pandemic-era search terms—like “quarantine,” “social distancing” and “lockdown”—being deleted from the browser and replaced with those that symbolize a return to normalcy. The search giant has also been working with the Ad Council on a number of vaccine education efforts, including a “Get The Facts” campaign that’s set to run through April.
Businesses on the frontlines of vaccine distribution are ramping up their marketing, too. While demand for the vaccine has outstripped supply until recently, Walgreens CMO Pat McLean says the company has held off on widespread marketing efforts, instead focusing on hyper-targeted advertising based on availability. Now that supply has increased, McLean says it’s time to encourage those still on the fence. And because Walgreens isn’t just targeting its usual customers, but speaking to the masses, the media strategy is different, too.
Earlier last week, Walgreens debuted a new campaign titled “This Is Our Shot.” The first ad, narrated by singer John Legend, showcases a range of pastimes put on pause due to the pandemic, from graduations and weddings to holidays and sporting events. A second ad featuring Legend’s single, for which the campaign is named, will debut in a few weeks and find the artist making an emotional appeal for viewers to get vaccinated.