Work Everywhere before the flu is

Seven illustrated portraits arranged in a circle, showing Yukoners of different ages, genders and cultural backgrounds.
A cast of Yukoners built so nearly everyone could spot someone familiar, then reused everywhere the campaign went.
Newspaper ad in the Whitehorse Star with the campaign headline and portrait circle above three short paragraphs on why the flu shot matters, ending at Yukon.ca/flu.
A run in the Whitehorse Star, because plenty of Yukoners still get their news on paper.
The folded direct mailer, opened to show flu shot questions and answers in white type on dark teal, with the circle of portraits and the Yukon logo on the facing panel.

One flu season to reach every Yukoner over thirteen

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Challenge

Two years of COVID had a side effect nobody planned for. Everyone forgot about the flu. Yukoners were heading back to offices and classrooms with their guard down on a virus that never went anywhere, and Health and Social Services had one flu season to change that. No room to build awareness slowly, no second window. The message had to reach every Yukoner aged 13 and up, in Whitehorse and in the communities, across every age group and background. And it had to read as the same campaign whether it landed in a mailbox or between two TikToks.

Solution

I started with where people actually are, then built for each of those places instead of resizing one ad to fit all of them. Direct mailers went to every household in the territory. Posters, newspaper ads and radio covered the ground digital tends to miss. Animated ads ran on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok, with Google Display picking up the rest. Holding it together was an illustrated cast of Yukoners of different ages, backgrounds and genders, drawn so people could find themselves in the campaign without feeling lectured by it.

Results

The campaign reached the whole territory inside a tight seasonal window, spread across enough channels that no single one had to carry it. The illustrated system held its shape from a mailer to a fifteen second animation, which is the part multi-channel campaigns usually get wrong, and it left HSS with a look they could pick back up for future public health work rather than starting from a blank page every fall.

Credits

Creative direction, design and production
Mikayla Ericsson
Account management
Bianca Jorgenson
Voiceover
Emma Taylor
Studio
MBDC