No one tells a New Yorker what to do. 

But with all the social distancing, lockdowns, mandates and mortality, it’s felt like COVID has been pushing our city around. 

We needed a campaign that could tell COVID off in a way only New Yorkers could. 

The “COVID CAN’T CONTROL ME” campaign did just that. 

It started with the glaring realization that despite the availability of effective COVID-19 vaccines, massive percentages of under-served communities in NYC had not received a single dose of protection. 

Our research showed that despite the relentless threat, this group of New Yorkers has specific reasons for not wanting to get vaccinated:

·      Fear of being experimented on among Black and Latinx populations 

·      Fear of being deported for undocumented people

·      Mistrust fueled by evolving mandates and breakthrough infections 

·      Misinformation regarding vaccine efficacy 

·      Insurance coverage and cost concerns

To ensure our ads felt genuine, we co-created with writers and artists who identified with the communities we were trying to reach. We partnered with FCBWE, our network’s employee-led Diversity & Inclusion Council. Together, we created an honest and respectful campaign that let New Yorkers experience authentic stories from their neighbors who got vaccinated. 

The first phase of this campaign was pro bono. The immersive placement included concept development and rollout of: 

·      Moving digital and print posters wherever our communities were

§  Strategically placed at bus shelters, subway platforms, barbershops, bodegas, newspapers, and billboards

·      11 translations 

·      Website content

·      Instagram, Facebook, and Twitters posts

Our campaign features real stories told by outer-borough residents and members of the NYCH+H community: 

·      Lattice, a 100-year-old baddie who loves her Harlem neighborhood

·      Derek, a Bellevue healthcare provider who nearly died from COVID and Donna, the nurse who saved him   

·      Manjinder, Chief Nursing Officer at NYCH+H, and her daughters who want to explore their city 

·      Carter and Julian, siblings from Harlem who miss their pickup basketball games

For the second phase, NYCH+H decided to fund a series of social media videos to bring those stories to life. 

From February through May of 2022, the campaign tallied ~66 million impressions. It motivated 165K of our neighbors to get vaccinated at NYCH+H.

We heard our fellow New Yorkers loud and clear—COVID CAN’T CONTROL US!