City of Chicago
Background
When the COVID19 vaccines for teens were announced, they didn’t enjoy the same level of popularity in Chicago as other age groups. Even after 6 months of the vaccine announcement, less than 40% of Chicago teens were vaccinated. Teens thought they were invincible and could not be affected by Covid. Also, those who got vaccinated didn’t share or talk about it enough, especially in black and brown communities due to the perception of the vaccines in these groups. The goal was to get 70% of teens vaccinated by the end of the campaign and do it in a way that made vaccines enticing to this whole group.
Idea
Despite the announcement of COVID19 vaccines for teens, less than 40% of them considered getting vaccinated. Teens are hard to get through to with traditional advertising. We had to come up with an engaging way to get their attention. So we tapped into FOMO, and announced NFT portraits that teens could own, once they get vaccinated on site. We partnered with Chicago’s celebrity photographer, Sandro Miller and created a customized mobile studio to capture portraits across Chicago. The portraits were personalized with AI based on the teen’s dreams and feelings for the future right in the moment they got vaccinated. The design system was created with machine learning algorithm that read the teens’ voice and words and turned it into stunning personalized backdrops. This allowed teens to think about their future with the vaccine, while also owning an NFT as an asset that captured this unique moment in time.
Execution
The Face Forward Project started with the construction of a customized mobile studio so we could travel to the least vaccinated neighborhoods. The studio had the ability to capture stills, audio and video. The teens were interviewed about their future while they were being photographed, and their words were read by AI in real-time, generating a personalized backdrop for each portrait. This resulted in a personalized NFT. The studio traveled for over two months capturing the portraits of teens across Chicago. These portraits were placed them across multiple on ground touchpoints, in a variety of mediums - OOH, murals, projections, citywide exhibits as well as online platforms like Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok, Twitch, Spotify in order to inspire other teens to get vaccinated. They also became the foundation for a music video that was released a month later, inviting more teens to be part of the project and get vaccinated.
Outcome
The Face Forward project ran for three months, followed by promotion and a music video launch, resulting in:
• There were over 340 million impressions online
• Teen influencers across the city ended up being a part of it
• There was a 2000% increase in vaccine interest, with a sudden jump in vaccine registrations
• It led to nearly 85% of Chicago teens vaccinated compared to the national average of just 68%
