ST. Louis County Department of Public Health
Launching a Multi-Channel Campaign to Increase COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake
Amid deep political, cultural, and racial divides, St. Louis County faced an urgent challenge: persuading hesitant residents to get vaccinated against COVID-19. Fenton created and launched ReviveSTL, a multi-channel campaign built on community voices and trusted messengers. Through brand development, targeted media strategies, and powerful creative featuring local residents, the campaign achieved measurable impact — boosting vaccination rates, building trust, and positioning St. Louis County as the highest vaccinated county in Missouri.
What We Did
- Branding, naming, and logo development
- Messaging and narrative framework
- Earned media strategy and execution
- Digital strategy (social, email, web)
- Website design and development
- Multilingual digital toolkit for community partners
- Multi-channel paid advertising campaign (TV, radio, social, billboards)
- Video production featuring local community members
- Creative asset development across all channels
- Community engagement and influencer amplification
CHALLENGE
St. Louis County’s residents were hit especially hard by the COVID-19 pandemic given the low rate of vaccination. Trying to persuade the reluctant to get vaccinated was the greatest public health imperative of 2021. Yet a confluence of social, political and cultural factors made the creation of a single, unified call for vaccination a challenge. To further complicate matters, the area has been a hotbed for racial tension and racial polarization, with unrest in Ferguson bringing the County national attention in 2014, and setting up a tense relationship with local government. Fenton delivered a surround-sound communications strategy focused on amplifying the reach of the County Health Department and its vaccination efforts to the County’s most vulnerable communities.
APPROACH
Fenton worked quickly to develop an entirely new campaign to support the vaccination uptake effort. Through an iterative branding, naming and messaging development process, Fenton created the ReviveSTL name, logo and brand guidelines for the County to use. Implementation immediately followed the creation of the campaign brand including research-informed messaging, robust earned media and digital (social & email) strategies, development of a new website that streamlined the vaccination process, a digital toolkit (translated into 6 languages) created to encourage engagement with community based groups for richer implementation, and a $900K multi-channel paid advertising campaign that spanned TV, radio, social media, and billboards.
IMPACT
ReviveSTL has been successful in reaching residents in every corner of the County and has elevated dozens of everyday residents, businesses, and community and faith leaders in the process. The campaign has seen:
- A 22% increase in the county’ s vaccination rate from the campaign’s launch in May ’21 to Nov ’21
- St. Louis County is the highest vaccinated county in Missouri – 68.9% of St. Louis Countians have at least initiated vaccination, and 60.6% have completed vaccination
- Advertising featuring local voices viewed more than 30M times by County residents
- More than 88,000 visitors to ReviveSTL.com with nearly 28K clicks to find a vaccine taking place
- More than 25 stories in the press; potentially viewed more than 9 million times
- Dozens of high-quality videos featuring County residents
- The vaccination rate increased from 35% to 57% (as of 12/1/21) since our efforts launched, and Black communities with low medical resources have experienced a 5-10% lift in vaccination. Fenton’s efforts also drew attention to a local vaccine advocate from the White House and the CDC, as well as national attention to the Black beauty and barber shop #SleevesUpSTL initiative. The implementation of the full campaign exceeded standard benchmarks and continues to see strong engagement
