In 2020 Facebook was running their Groups creative, an ongoing branding campaign encouraging users to find their Facebook group, when Covid hit the US. With markets going into lockdown and the country in a state of emergency, Facebook knew they wanted to address the situation we were all facing. They looked to create a new strategy, including a way to utilize their existing media space. Facebook saw an opportunity to acknowledge the hard work of essential and medical workers during these unprecedented times. With a quick turnaround, the team was able to identify high impact and relevant units from their prior Groups campaign and further amplify the plan by being hyper-local and amplifying the messaging with additional contextually relevant OOH units near hospitals and along key commuter routes.
Digital & Print Producer: Nicholas Blair
Winner of the 2020 OOH Media Plan of the Year award by the OAAA
The Target audience was healthcare workers, but also delivery people, grocers, sanitation workers, and more frontline workers who were keeping communities running.
The goal was to launch the new Thank You messaging into the markets as quickly as possible by utilizing DOOH and securing contextually relevant placements. The markets included New York, Los Angeles, Seattle, and San Francisco - cities that were highly affected by the virus in its early stages. New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco were part of the earlier Groups campaign, while Seattle was added to the Thank You initiative due to the way Covid was impacting the city. The campaign was broken up into two waves, with wave 1 initially focusing on healthcare workers, prioritizing units near hospitals (including pop-up emergency centers), and utilizing existing high impact units that were already secured. The second wave launched a week later, focusing on other essential workers and expanding the reach in the markets. This wave prioritized media near grocery stores, pharmacies, and key commuter routes.
Facebook ran an OTS Lucid study on the entirety of this campaign and OOH was successful in directionally increasing both ad awareness and message pull through. The relevancy of the locations and messaging proved to resonate with consumers and our target audience.