• by Les Luchter , May 8, 2024

By the numbers, the U.S. government’s marketing campaign to get Americans vaccinated for COVID-19 was a resounding success, with new research proving that ads played an “indispensable” part in protecting people during the pandemic, declared Xavier Becerra, Health and Human Services (HSS) Secretary, in announcing the results.

“This study demonstrates the return on investment possible from public education campaigns,” HSS said in a press release.

“As stewards of the public’s money, we wanted to deliver impact for the American people in the most efficient and effective ways,” Becerra stated. “This confirms we did exactly that. We will no doubt use what we learned in this campaign to further improve our public health efforts in the future.”

In results published this week in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, HSS reported that its “We Can Do This” campaign resulted in an $89.54 return in societal benefits for every $1 spent between April 2021 and March 2022 -- or an ROI of about 90:1.  HSS says the research, conducted by HHS and the Fors Marsh consulting firm, marks the first and only study of “the contributions of a media campaign to encourage people to get COVID-19 vaccines during the pandemic emergency period.”

The researchers cited an estimated $731.9 billion in societal benefits due to averted illness and related costs, while campaign expenditures totaled $377 million, with an additional $7.9 billion spent to vaccinate 22.3 million people.

Those vaccinations prevented nearly 2.6 million infections from the virus that causes COVID-19, and nearly 244,000 hospitalizations, the report stated, noting that the highly contagious Delta and Omicron variants were spreading during that time period.

Paid media expenditures for “We Can Do This,” totaled $276.0 million, led by digital spend at $116.5 million.

National TV came next at $101.4 million, followed by local radio, $14.7 million; local TV, $10.2 million; local out-of-home, $9.0 million; local print, $8.9 million; national out-of-home $6.9 million; national radio, $7.5 million; and national print, $1.7 million.

“We Can Do This,” which aimed to reach 90% of adults in the U.S. at least once per quarter, with more intense outreach to high-risk communities, featured more than 7,000 ads in 14 languages, with many of them culturally tailored and geographically targeted to specific minority, racial, and ethnic audiences.

You can see samples of the TV ads here, here, here and here.

The government spent another $101.5 million to support the campaign, including planning, market research, content development and testing.

“This research confirms the benefits of public health campaigns as part of a multi-layered response to a public health crisis and to the effort to provide accurate information to the American public,” May Malik, senior advisor for public education campaigns at HHS, said in a statement.

Input for the study included data on COVID-19 outcomes, uptake of COVID-19 vaccines, and vaccine effectiveness, from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), along with survey data collected to measure the campaign’s effects on vaccination behaviors over time.