• by Les Luchter , Staff Writer, May 8, 2025

Kudos to the red state of Oklahoma, #48 out of 50 in number of flu vaccinations, for “Skip the Flu, Not the Fun,” a $2 million late-season ad campaign credited for a 20% increase in flu shot uptake from January through March.

Flu season begins around October, but due to bureaucratic delays, the Oklahoma State Department of Health (OSDH) couldn’t even put out a request for campaign proposals until late November/early December. By the timeOklahoma City-based agency Candor was awarded the contract and had developed static graphics to start the campaign, it was early January.

“We executed as quickly as we could,” says Annie Davenport, the agency’s manager, marketing. By the time the campaign ended in late March, Candor had overseen not only 400 different static graphic variations, but 17 videos (for both social media and broadcast), two audio spots (for Spotify and radio), and 32 influencer posts.

The entire process was helped by a smaller -- under $50,000 -- campaign that OSDH had run the previous year. “That allowed us to already have a look and feel,” Rachel Baugh, OSDH’s assistant director of the office of communications, tells Pharma & Health Insider.

OSDH had begun using that “look and feel” again in organic social media earlier in the season. “That’s what Candor took and ran with,” says Baugh.

“We put together a campaign that was not built around the fear of getting the flu, but rather the life you may miss out on if you are stuck home and sick,” explains Davenport. 

She credits that “very soft” lifestyle approach with contributing greatly to the campaign’s effectiveness.

Candor has numbers to back that up. Meta ads, for example, achieved a 5.35% engagement rate, 167% above benchmark, the agency says, with YouTube view rates and website conversions nearly tripling and doubling industry averages respectively.

Candor reports more than 157 million total impressions, and while 65% of the campaign’s budget went to digital, 56 million of those impressions came from traditional media.

Much of that traditional media spend came in rural areas, including out-of-home, radio, and even ads in 53 newspapers.

By varying graphics and substituting words at the end of the main tagline (for example, “Skip the flu, not your next promotion” for working adults), the campaign segmented audiences included not only the rural population, but also vulnerable populations like adults 65+, parents of school-age children, and urban audiences. Hispanics were also targeted, including with a radio buy.

Specific content was also developed around such events as the Super Bowl (“Skip the flu, not the big game”), Valentine’s Day and March Madness.

Influencers spanned NIL athletes, the fitness community, and moms. One of the latter,  Masha Andrianova, “had one of the best campaigns,” Davenport recalls, “because she talked about not just the vaccine, but staying healthy.” An example from one post: “Getting a flu shot this season allowed me to stay healthy all winter long! Keep in mind, the flu is still going on, so it's never too late to get one.”)

Pinterest was a particular effective medium for outreach to millennial parents, Candor says.

Another platform -- LinkedIn -- was used to reach health professionals and administrators, with its strongest click-throughs coming from users in higher education and government. A sample tagline: “Skip the flu, not your well-deserved PTO.”

Candor says the campaign shows how “community-first storytelling, hyper-local creative, and real-time media optimizations” can move the needle in public health

“Despite a late, severe flu season that overwhelmed hospitals and forced school closures, the campaign broke through,” the agency states. “Search trends for flu-related terms surged across Oklahoma, proving that when public health taps into smart, culturally resonant storytelling -- and meets people where they are -- it doesn’t just raise awareness. It drives action.”