NHS Childhood Vaccinations Campaign

The NHS SEL ICS CIMMS campaign aimed to achieve several key objectives, focusing on influencing parents of unvaccinated children aged 0-15. The campaign sought to:

1. Raise awareness about the importance of childhood vaccinations and encourage catch-up vaccinations.
2. Reach a broad target audience, specifically parents living or working in Southeast London with children aged 15 and under.
3. Encourage individuals to check vaccination records or consult with their GPs.
4. Emphasise that individuals and children not registered with GPs could still receive free vaccinations through the NHS.
5. Drive users to a campaign-specific landing page.
6. Encourage participation in an awareness and feedback survey.
7. Test a novel messaging and audience-centric approach.

• Main audience: All parents of children aged 0 – 15 in Southeast London, covering SEL boroughs.
• Single-parent households.
• Refugee and asylum seekers with children.
• Young mothers.
• Guardians of Looked After Children (in care, foster, or other temporary/interim/long-term non-parent homes).
• Families/parents/carers in deprived areas in Southeast London.
• Families in temporary accommodation.

We ran numerous campaigns across Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Spotify to engage with our most challenging-to-reach target audiences.

1. Campaign 1 (All Parents 0-15): Targeted all parents in Southeast London through demographic targeting on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Spotify. A dedicated landing page addressed parents’ common concerns about childhood vaccinations.
2. Campaign 2 (Languages & Expats): Focused on non-English speakers, utilising translated text ads and subtitled YouTube ads on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. It also targeted users migrating from countries with low vaccination rates.
3. Campaign 3 (IMD Areas): Directed a proportion of budget to all platforms toward geographic areas with high Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) scores.
4. Campaign 4 (MMR Specific): Ran a specific MMR vaccination campaign on Facebook to address and dispel misinformation.

We initiated a poll campaign on Facebook, prompting users to confirm whether their children were up to date with their childhood vaccinations. Given the topical nature of the subject, this campaign generated heightened engagement, both positively and negatively. Users who responded with a ‘no’ to the poll were directed to participate in a survey, where they could openly share their reasons for not pursuing vaccination. This valuable feedback provided crucial insights into the vaccination hesitancy factors.

Subsequently, we executed a diverse range of creatives tailored to specific parental needs. For parents of children aged 0-8, we emphasised the importance of checking their child’s red book, clarified that children not registered with a GP were still eligible for vaccinations, and presented statistics regarding unvaccinated children. These creatives included both static and video ads.

Additionally, we ran targeted campaigns for parents of 9-15-year-olds, shedding light on the benefits of the MenACWY vaccine. We reiterated that even children not registered with a GP could receive vaccinations, offering protection against severe illnesses like HPV-related cancers, Meningitis, Septicaemia, Diphtheria, Tetanus, and Polio.

For added clarity, we launched an MMR-specific campaign, educating users about the purpose and safety of the MMR vaccine.

The call to action across all campaigns remained consistent, encouraging parents to take action by either checking their child’s red book, initiating contact with their GP, or clicking through for further information. This unified approach aimed to guide parents toward informed decisions regarding their children’s vaccinations.

1. Campaign 1 (All Parents 0-15): Targeted all parents of children aged 0-15 with relevant video content.
2. Campaign 2 (Ethnic and Identity Groups): Targeted parents who have shown an interest in ethnic and identity groups as a topic of video content.
3. Campaign 3 (Vaccine Specific): Targeted users watching videos about specific vaccines, allowing for tailored ad placements.
4. Campaign 4 (BAME Channels): Focused on hand-selected BAME channels to reach specific demographics.
5. Campaign 5 (Website Visitors): Targeted website visitors and users who had interacted with the SEL ICS website.

Due to budget constraints, we opted for an alternative approach to video production. Instead of hiring a videographer, we leveraged stock video footage and enlisted the services of a voiceover artist who embodied the spirit of Southeast London. Byte Digital managed the sourcing of all necessary footage, animation, production, and engaged the services of a talented voiceover artist.

The campaign was structured as a TrueView format, allowing viewers the option to skip after just 5 seconds. Within this brief window, we ensured that the initial 5 seconds provided a clear and concise explanation of the video’s purpose and content.

In our targeting strategy, we directed our efforts towards all parents while purposefully excluding children from the audience, via negative channels. This is a list of children’s channels we regularly update ensuring that our advertisements do not appear on these channels. This approach was designed to optimise our budget allocation, ensuring that advertising expenditures were not incurred when parents passed their phones or tablets to their children.

We directed our Spotify audio ad campaign towards all parents, leveraging its cost-effectiveness and wide-reaching capabilities to achieve our goals.

• Targeted all parents via Spotify audio ads, ensuring cost-effectiveness and high reach.

• Achieved a robust conversion rate of 3.33% from landing page clicks, totalling 9,182 click-throughs.
• Attained a substantial reach of 155,000 parents within Southeast London using Meta platforms.
• Generated 122,265 views for YouTube campaigns, with a cost of just £0.02 per view.
• Reached 70,647 unique users on Spotify, resulting in 242,000 impressions, despite a modest budget of £500.
• Gained valuable insight from surveys.
• Raised awareness throughout SEL.