Illustration-led digital campaign

The CDHB challenged Publica to create a behavioural change campaign to inspire Cantabrians to vaccinate against the flu. The brief was to craft for mass appeal, whilst targeting key, hard-to-reach community segments.

Initially imagined as an awareness campaign, Publica’s thinking quickly flipped this into an engagement-focussed activity – a totally new illustrative approach that encouraged audience interactivity.

We built a mini-site, encouraging users to personify and personalise their own flu virus character – to ‘build-a-germ’ and share it wide, digitally. Collateral included bespoke illustration of each target market segment for enhanced relatability.

With over 180,000 flu-protected people, one third of the region’s population, the campaign was a roaring success up from 120,000 on 2017. In part, this was thanks to the features of the Flu Free mini-site, encouraging users to learn immersively, and spread the word with friends and family through social media.

In acknowledgement of its success, this campaign was awarded a 2020 IABC Gold Quill Award of Excellence for its innovative approach and wide impact.

With Canterbury reaching first place in vaccine uptake stats across regional DHBs, the campaign flew beyond its objectives.