Get This Free Ad Council COVID Toolkit

Posted on by March 15, 2021

Want to get your COVID-related messaging out as effectively as possible? Here’s a toolkit from the Ad Council and COVID Collaborative that features downloadable graphics, plus messaging recommendations, do’s and don’ts, and tips about language and tone.

The non-profit Ad Council brings together creative minds in advertising, media, technology and marketing to address social causes, and was the driving force behind ad campaigns including Friends Don’t Let Friends Drive Drunk, Smokey Bear, and Love Has No Labels.

The toolkit includes:

  • Messaging Recommendations. Strategic guidelines, messaging elements that resonate (and don’t), language considerations, and trusted messengers.
  • Messaging That Resonates. Strategies to build confidence and trust, remind people why the COVID vaccine is important, and help them see it as a critical step in protecting themselves and their families. This also provides specific recommendations for communicating with Black and Latino audiences.
  • Core Insights. Insights from research by the Ad Council and others about the key concerns behind low vaccine confidence — safety, side effects, lack of information, and the speed of the clinical trials. This includes specific research on Black Americans and Latinos, as well as trusted messengers.
  • Downloadable Videos and Graphics. Videos, vaccine FAQs, suggested talking points, and customizable social media copy.

Black Physicians Make the Case for COVID Vax

Posted on by March 8, 2021

For Black patients who need convincing that it’s a good, safe move to get a COVID-19 vaccination, here’s a video from the Black Physicians Network of Columbus, Ohio that makes the case. Dozens of Ohio Black physicians in this short video address the reasons why Black patients might be skeptical, and explain why they ultimately decided to get vaccinated themselves. Well made, and definitely worth a watch.

Translation Without Words

Posted on by March 1, 2021

Not all translation depends on words, as is made clear by a New York Times obit for graphic designer and artist Rajie Cook.

In 1974, Cook’s design firm was hired by the US Department of Transportation as it prepared for what was assumed would be an influx of foreign visitors around the time of the 1976 bicentennial. Cook’s charge was to create symbols that could efficiently convey to people who didn’t speak English key information — for instance, where are the bathrooms, which gender do they serve, where’s the elevator, or the train or bus stop.

The firm came up with 34 pictographs, still in use today. Cook’s analysis of that work contains a lesson that remains relevant to anyone trying to communicate across cultural spans: “We held firm to the principle that design communicates to its maximum efficiency without frills, contrivances and other extraneous material.”

Read Rajie Cook, 90, Who Helped Make Sense of Public Spaces, here.