About Project

In March 2020, the County of Santa Clara released a shelter-in-place order on the heels of California’s statewide effort to slow the spread of COVID-19. Complicating the situation was the fact that over 40% of residents in the state’s sixth most populous county, home to over 1.9 million, are from non-English-speaking households. In some communities this number reaches 70%. To effectively communicate with all county residents, the County of Santa Clara’s Emergency Operations Center would need to communicate their message in five different languages.

To help combat misinformation and share vital, factual information with residents during a crucial time in one of the states hit hardest by COVID-19, Santa Clara County, with the support of AdQuick, launched a critical public health campaign across multiple OOH ad formats, including billboards, bus shelters, bus kings, and GSTV. Together they deployed messaging in five different languages throughout high-risk, hard-to-reach zip codes within the county’s 1,304 square miles.

In an environment of panic and uncertainty, the County’s Emergency Operations Center partnered with AdQuick to quickly launch a targeted OOH campaign tailored to reach residents throughout the county. Of importance was sharing critical COVID-19 prevention measures and calls to action with residents in multilingual, lower-income and agricultural households who lacked access to digital or language-applicable messaging.

To achieve this, the County combined its internal data on three factors (location, primary language and population density) with AdQuick’s OOH technology and audience targeting capabilities. Facing a critical and aggressive timeline, the County worked with AdQuick’s creative services team to create culturally and linguistically competent campaigns that feature real, every-day community members.

With the County’s latest vaccination campaign, they’ve championed creative that highlights local residents, farm workers and other essential workers,coaches and athletes, teachers and the like. There are no actors here. Rather, the County is honoring the everyday people who have continued doing their part to get vaccinated and stop the spread of COVID-19 within their communities. In addition, the campaign included Javascript ads in communities with a high penetration of tech workers that were designed to encourage social sharing for maximum campaign virality.

The campaign far surpassed Santa Clara County’s awareness goals. The campaign reached 99.25% of all residents in targeted, hard-to-reach zip codes, with an average frequency of 12.8. The County’s campaigns have resulted in real-life benefits, including a 77.2% completed vaccination rate of residents ages 12 and older as of July 2021, far above the nation’s 57.1% vaccination rate. That’s over 1.3 million residents. Another 100,000 residents have received at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine.

Ultimately the County’s initiative was so successful and integral to its COVID-19 response that it continued its OOH campaign into 2021, modifying its messaging as the pandemic has continued to evolve.