California Department of Public Health COVID-19 Vaccination campaign in 2021.

Written by
Team crackerJCK
Posted on
January 4, 2023

At a Glance

For our work with the California Department of Public Health (CDPH), crackerJCK teamed up with SF-based agency Duncan-Channon to manage all paid ad spend across Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Reddit and Twitter advertising channels.

The Problem

In the midst of fake news and vaccination mistruths, correct, accurate and accessible information could not have been more important for Californians, especially hard-hit Black and brown communities across the state. Our campaign focused on both ethnicity-based groups and blanket-wide advertising coverage for the entire golden state, resulting in 240M+ impressions served on social media platforms alone within a 9 month timeframe.

The Solution

Our main goal was to optimize any and all ad spend within each niche of the campaign. This resulted in dozens of groups segmented by interest-categories (ex. New Mothers, Pregnant People), identity categories (ex. Disabled folks, LGBTQ+, Black and brown Californians), and geographic locations (hardest hit zip codes), with inevitable overlap between our targets.

The campaign was highly dynamic, changing every few weeks according to the data brought in from CDPH. Through constant A/B testing from the creative down to the copy down to the placement, we were able to achieve an incredibly favorable overall CPM of $6.89 with a near quarter of a Billion impressions served in a 9 month span.

The Results

As with any awareness campaign, particularly a Public Service Announcement, end-results were difficult to track. The state did see an increase in vaccination rates among the zip codes we targeted, though the % lift is impossible to determine.

What is most important is that we diligently tested and spent the budget, yielding a CPM that was approximately half of the then-average CPM cost on social ad platforms, which is a remarkable feat given the sheer size and scale of the campaign.