Marketing firm talks clicks and impressions, but is it succeeding?
In mid-October, GYK Antler, the Manchester marketing firm awarded nearly $1.3 million by the state to boost New Hampshire’s vaccination numbers, sent the state a performance report of the newest social media campaign: Ads had 619,736 “impressions” and 1,231 “clicks” on Facebook and Instagram in the first week.
It’s the same proof-of-success evidence the state Department of Health and Human Services cited in August when questioned about the effectiveness of the campaign’s first phase, which included nearly $73,000 in social media ads that ran from April to July.
The problem, experts say, is impressions are meaningless because they count how often an ad appears on someone’s feed, not how often someone stops and looks at it. And it’s unclear, they said, whether the click count matters either because the firm didn’t say in its report whether it had measured a single ad click, which lands someone on vaccines. nh.gov, the state’s vaccine homepage, or the next three clicks needed to reach a list of vaccination locations, or the two to three more clicks required to book an appointment.
In other words, there is
nothing in that mid-October report, which the Bulletin obtained through a
right-to-know request to the state, to indicate whether the nearly
$27,000 it’s spending this month on Facebook and Instagram ads alone is
on track to achieve the goal: getting more people vaccinated. And
nothing GYK Antler provided in that performance summary shows whether
the firm has assessed the campaign’s effectiveness or the possibility
that a different approach with different messaging would be more
effective.
That
matters because this is a high-stakes effort to make the state safer as
Covid-19 cases and hospitalizations are surging and the vaccination rate
lags at 54.7 percent.
“I
spend my days trying to get people away from what we call ‘vanity
metrics,’ which are large numbers like impressions, and try to get them
to pay attention to actual meaningful goal completions,” said Katie
Paine, CEO of Paine Publishing in Durham and founding member of the
Institute for Public Relations’ measurement commission. “The problem is
that your click rate is only as effective as the number of people who
actually click on what you want them to click on.”
Something else stood out to Heather Turner, a small business mentor
with SCORE, whose work with companies includes digital marketing: the
“Your Shot 603” Facebook page linked to the ads. The page was created in
March by GYK Antler, has only 31 followers, and has virtually no
content to share — not even the new ads — eliminating an opportunity for
people to help promote the vaccine to friends and family, an approach
Covid-19 messaging studies have encouraged. Meanwhile, misinformation
about the vaccine has gained traction on social media because it is so
easy to share.
Nor
does the Your Shot 603 Facebook page make the vaccination homepage
address immediately visible, something Turner recommends to get the most
out of the page. And the hashtag on the newest ads, #vaccinatenh, leads
to a Health and Human Services Facebook page that promotes
immunizations but focuses on the flu, not the Covid-19 vaccine.
“What
happens with a lot of businesses is, they’ll say, ‘Hey, I’m getting a
lot of traffic from my ad, but nobody’s buying,’” Turner said. “And
that’s because somebody gets to their homepage or their landing page and
then they bounce,” meaning they abandon the site.
‘Research, research, research’
Jayme
Simoes, owner of Louis Karno & Company, a Concord-based strategy
and marketing firm, questioned the choice of the campaign name, “Your
Shot 603.” While clever, he wondered whether the firm had tested it with
people who avoid vaccinations for fear of needles and pain.
When
his firm ran a statewide campaign to drive health insurance enrollment
upon passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010, his team began with
focus groups, talking to people representative of their audience about
concerns and motivations. He learned they didn’t trust doctors or
websites that ended in .gov; believed they were too healthy to need
health insurance; and liked getting their information from direct mail
(aka junk mail), not their phones.
“It’s
research, research, research,” Simoes said, followed by tests and
retests of the message’s impact. It’s a recommendation others working on
vaccine campaigns have also made.
If
GYK Antler is tracking clicks all the way to appointment bookings, it
didn’t say so in its report to the state. Nor has it provided that
evidence in two right-to-know requests filed in May and August. And
neither GYK Antler nor Health and Human Services have returned multiple messages since August.
Health
and Human Services hired GYK Antler, which has done marketing work for
the state before, for this campaign without putting the job out to bid.
The
nearly $1.3 million in federal pandemic relief the state is paying GYK
Antler is divided between two phases: the first for $434,500 and the
current one that ends in December for $844,000. The contract for the
initial phase was also approved in April without the Executive Council’s
approval because the governor’s pandemic emergency orders exempted the
contract from that oversight.
Nearly
$333,000 of that first phase paid for radio, television and social
media spots. The rest paid for creative, media, and promotion services
and expenses.
Based on
the right-to-know documents provided by state, it’s unclear how GYK
Antler and state officials in the governor’s office determined the
promotion’s messaging or its messengers: New England Patriots player
Chase Winovich for most ads and comedian Seth Meyers, raised in New
Hampshire, for one. Emails provided by Health and Human Services show
U.S. District Court Judge Joe Laplante, who sits in New Hampshire, and
Bedford businessman Bill Grenier suggested a different comedian and
several pro athletes with New Hampshire ties. They had been part of a
group seeking to help the state stand up large vaccination sites early
into the pandemic.
The
Facebook and Instagram ads include one with Winovich and Gov. Chris
Sununu promoting the vaccine from a football field, and several others
with Winovich alone. Winovich isn’t identified and was likely recognized
by mostly Patriots fans.
In
one, Winovich says to himself in the mirror, “Now, this is your shot to
show New Hampshire what you’re made out of.” He then speaks to the
camera: “Now go out there and get your Covid-19 vaccine. Let’s go!
Boom!”
Different approach
In
August, Health and Human Services asked the Executive Council for
permission to amend the contract with GYK Antler so it could pay the
firm an additional $844,000 for a second campaign phase. Before the
vote, Councilor Cinde Warmington asked the department how it was
measuring the effectiveness of the campaigns. Department spokesman Jake
Leon told her there had been 18.7 million digital and “connected TV”
impressions, 6.8 million video views, and 74,584 clicks to
vaccines.nh.gov during phase one.
“I’d
say that last one tells me that we’re hitting the mark,” Leon told
Warmington. The contract was approved, 4-1, with Warmington voting
against it.
She raised
objections to political figures being in the ads and their designation
as having political content. Warmington also said studies have shown
that approach to be ineffective and asked Health and Human Services
Commissioner Lori Shibinette to commit to not including political
figures in the future.
Shibinette
declined to do so, saying Sununu — as well as herself and state
epidemiologist Dr. Benjamin Chan — appeared in some early promotion
because they were the most visible people in the state responding to the
pandemic. She said many other states had done the same.
Health
and Human Services did not provide any evidence at the council meeting
or in the right-to-know responses that those 74,584 clicks to
vaccines.nh.gov led to more vaccinations. A look at the progress of the
vaccination rate during the campaign’s three-month first phase does not
provide clear evidence either. The rate of fully vaccinated people had
been climbing steadily and significantly since January, when the vaccine
first became available, and continued that way during the first month
of that campaign. But the rate began lagging in late June, remained
stalled during the next two months of the campaign, and has lagged
since.
The approach
was far different from what the state Division of Public Health Services
proposed from its own research in May, just as the GYK Antler ads began
to appear. Its plan, which was also obtained through a right-to
know-request, focused on persuading the “vaccine ambivalent” with
messages from parents and medical providers talking about the vaccine’s
safety and its role in returning to normal. The new campaign mirrors
those recommendations.
The
campaign’s second phase began this month: Of the $844,000 in the
amended contract, $219,000 is for creative and production services and
the remaining $625,500 paid for ads, billboards and promotion materials
in the state’s liquor stores, according to the contract. Social media
ads on Facebook and Instagram account for $70,000 of that.
Three
of those new ads, some of which are also in Spanish, feature New
Hampshire doctors talking about the vaccine’s safety and efficacy. The
doctors also promote the vaccine as the best way to keep adults and kids
safe, based on a printout of the ads provided through the right-to-know
request. In the other two, a man from Manchester and a woman from
Raymond share similar messages and recommend talking to a health care
provider. Pediatrician Dr. Holly Mintz, chief medical officer of
ambulatory services at Elliot Hospital, didn’t hesitate when the state
asked her to appear in an ad.
“Anything
we can do to help people to better understand the safety of the
vaccination, I’m happy to be part of,” she said in an interview.
In
her video, Mintz shares that she has had her own children vaccinated,
something she also tells patients unsure about vaccinating their own
children.
“There is a
lot of misinformation about the vaccine,” she said, “and people who
aren’t sure who to listen to are getting information that is not
accurate.”
According
to the amended contract, the state has asked GYK Antler to target people
who are hesitant or reluctant to get a vaccine, with a focus on people
between 15 and 50, favor conservative television and radio programs, and
have a high school diploma or some college education. There is also a
focus on ethnic and cultural minorities.