Millions of vulnerable families in Georgia are at risk of losing their healthcare coverage, a high-stakes situation with dramatic consequences. Jackson Spalding conceptualized the “Stay Informed. Stay Covered.” campaign to reach underserved populations statewide, working alongside the State of Georgia to deploy meaningful marketing and communications strategies to incite action.
Due to the COVID-19 public health emergency, Medicaid eligibility reviews have been paused since 2020, providing continuous health insurance coverage to eligible children and families. That will soon change.
Congress passed a bill permitting states to begin Medicaid redetermination on April 1, 2023. Now, Georgia is required to verify eligibility for all Medicaid or PeachCare for Kids® members by June 2024. This is the first time many of Georgia’s 2.7 million Medicaid and PeachCare for Kids® members will be required to go through the verification process.
While Medicaid members were our primary audience, advocacy groups, health partners and other ambassadors such as community leaders or members’ friends and family proved to be equally important to sufficiently reach everyone who may be affected.
Jackson Spalding’s far-reaching, multipurpose, multichannel campaign sought to achieve three crucial objectives:
In lieu of restricted first-party data, JS conducted rigorous data research — augmented by focus groups with community-based organizations and government officials — to understand the opportunities and access barriers for Medicaid members.
In addition to dynamic demographics with different language needs, levels of internet access and living situations, members faced an outdated website and long call-center wait times. Because redetermination is dependent on ad hoc federal directives, JS required agility amid tight and changing deadlines.
The campaign itself focused on three primary challenges:
Through a phased approach, we reached underserved populations statewide, deploying research-based strategies to incite action. With a heavy emphasis on digital performance tracking and optimization, paid media was a crucial component of all, meaningfully flooding the market and precisely targeting key demographics with a bias toward measurable outcomes.
“George A. Peach,” our animated ‘spokespeach’ became the leading voice for “Stay Informed. Stay Covered.” As the state’s most iconic and recognizable fruit, George added unexpected humor and delight to an otherwise complicated message with the goal of cross-cultural appeal to busy families with children. With George at the helm, the campaign came to life digitally through a streamlined website designed to help users understand why and how to update their contact information before driving them to the state social service website, Gateway.
We utilized our messaging across the state through multiple channels, including:
Our audience engaged with the campaign via paid media and learned more via SMS text codes and QR codes displayed on our flyers and other campaign collateral, including infographics, toolkits and other resources.
The “Stay Informed. Stay Covered.” campaign accumulated over 87 million impressions during 10 weeks in market, effectively building awareness among all key audiences. We captured 205K clicks to the campaign microsite and secured almost 10% click-thru rate to Gateway, our audience’s ultimate destination.
In addition to meaningful market saturation, the campaign caused a 129% growth in email being selected as the preferred contact method. At the end of the 10 weeks, 33% of total cases chose email compared to 14% at the start of the campaign.
While offline channels allowed us to build daily touchpoints that precisely reached audiences in novel ways, including digital point-of-sale screens and cash jackets, online channels facilitated a mobile-first approach for users dependent on a smartphone over the internet. 83% of ads were seen on mobile devices.
Our campaign saw a strong digital performance on Facebook, with our cost-per-click exceeding platform industry benchmarks by .5PTs. Our Spanish-speaking audience showed especially high engagement on this channel. Google AdWords surpassed click-thru-rate benchmarks by 3PTs. Lastly, YouTube succeeded in securing views of our video creative at a very low cost-per-view.
Our team’s relationships with traditional media channels secured $110K of bonus radio and TV spots, allowing the campaign to widen its reach and increase the frequency with which our ads ran in market, all while maintaining minimal political preemptions. Overall, our traditional channels added immense additional value to complement our digital presence.
Ongoing efforts seek to leverage these results for even higher engagement in current and future phases.
