• by Steve Ellwanger , December 14, 2021

If you’re a doubting senior citizen, can an animated coronavirus “monster” convince you to consult with a doctor about getting vaccinated?

The New York City Department for the Aging hopes so.

The agency has teamed with the o2kl agency and Rampage—a monster whose biggest fear is doctors—in an attempt to change the way unvaccinated people ages 60+ think about COVID.

A 30-second PSA spot running across the City’s five boroughs opens with the red-hued Rampage declaring “By the time you meet me, it’s too late.”

He goes on to explain that “your healthy cells are my guilty pleasure. I’ll enter your body and head for your lungs. Then I’ll smother you with my Rampage love.”

Then he delivers the spot’s call to action: “So talk to a doctor, but don’t wait too long. I’m just around the corner.”

The campaign strategy derives from focus groups in which—counter to popular societal narratives—some unvaccinated seniors didn’t fall into convenient buckets like Republicans or the anti-vax crowd.

“The Republican thing is an interesting angle because we did discuss it,” o2kl creative director Richard Eber tells Marketing Daily.  “A lot of them made it very clear ‘I’m not a Republican, I’m not for Trump, I’m not even an anti-vaxxer.’”

Some of the focus group participants simply resented being told what to do. “They came right out and said things like ‘I just hear the same thing over and over and over again. All you’re telling me to do is just get a vaccine, there’s no other side to the argument. I tune it out. I’m not listening anymore,'” says Eber.

Turns out too much media frequency can have a negative effect -- even when lives are at stake.

“One of the slides in our briefing for our teams and client was a sea-of-sameness slide, where we took a frame grab from every TV ad airing in the market talking about the vaccine,” says o2kl president and co-founder Tracey Owens. “And they’re all the exact same thing.”

The result was a decision to “personalize the virus and create a character so people can actually see what it does to their lungs,” adds Eber. “We decided we needed to shake things up a little bit and start with a clean slate because people were exhausted. They needed a breath of fresh air to somehow get them to recalculate and think things through.”

The TV spot is being translated into Spanish and Yiddish—as  are out-of-home ads in such venues as bus stop shelters and subways.