‘This was a life and death branding assignment’: On advertising for the COVID-19 age
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A powerful public-health campaign in Illinois aimed to meet historically underserved residents where they are: on their phones.
In the summer of 2020, JinJa Birkenbeuel got the assignment of a lifetime: Advocate Health Care, the largest healthcare system in Illinois, wanted her agency Birk Creative to develop a public-health campaign to educate Black and Latinx residents about COVID-19. The disease was raging in Illinois, and communities of color were especially hit hard. Birkenbeuel and her team knew they couldn’t just make a clever poster and call it a day.