The Ad Council vs. The Pandemic

Earlier this week, the Ad Council announced a new goal—raise a minimum of $50 million from the private sector to fund a Covid-19 vaccine awareness campaign.

• In light of recent positive vaccine testing results, the Ad Council will partner with Covid Collaborative, a group of bipartisan leaders in education, health, and policy, for the initiative.

“Widespread adoption of the Covid-19 vaccine is our generation’s ‘moonshot’ and will represent one of the largest public health interventions in our nation’s history,” Ad Council President and CEO Lisa Sherman told Ad Age, emphasizing that an effective PSA could help save “hundreds of thousands of lives” in the U.S.

Some backstory

This isn’t exactly the Ad Council’s first rodeo.

Whomst? The Ad Council is a nonprofit that basically invented the term PSA (public service announcement). Founded in 1942, it has historically created and distributed PSAs for U.S. government agencies, other nonprofits, and NGOs.

• The good ol’ AC is behind many a storied public service ad campaign, including the classic Smokey the Bear “Only You can Prevent Forest Fires” messaging that’s been running since 1944.

Not old news: This vaccine campaign won’t be the Ad Council’s first shot at Covid-19, either (no pun intended). Since March, the nonprofit has spawned efforts resulting in 58.4 million engagements across platforms, and over 30 million visits to coronavirus.gov, per Ad Age.

The game plan

So what’s this campaign going to look like from a marketing perspective? We don’t know much, but we do know it’s employing a few main strategies:

• Emphasizing the continued importance of face masks
• Addressing vaccine-related misconceptions
• Using community outreach to reach diverse audiences

The deets: Distribution channels will include TV, radio, and digital. Agencies such as Verizon Media's RYOT Studio, dentsumcgarrybowen, M8, and Entercom are involved.

• The campaign will also send audiences to Coping-19.org, where 100+ vetted multilingual resources offer mental health assistance, self-care advice, and scientific information on the virus, per MediaPost.

Why it matters: “It’s not often you get to work on a campaign that genuinely has the power to help people manage their lives,” dentsumcgarrybowen New York President Ida Rezvani told MediaPost.

Looking ahead: We’ll keep you updated on how the campaign is doing and who is involved as we get more information.