How much time do you spend on Facebook every day? Be honest. 10 minutes? And hour? More? What if that time was influencing your behavior? Whether you think so or not, it almost certainly is changing the way you think. What if we could leverage that to increase people accessing vaccines around the world? If you live in the United States, the average adult spends 33 minutes a day on Facebook alone. The Philippines has the highest social media use in the world, where the average person spends about 4 hours a day on social media platforms.
Faced with populations hesitant to get vaccinated, CARE, in partnership with Facebook, is rolling out vaccine public service announcements in 19 countries, after doing some research to decide what would work best.
In the US, CARE used $411,000 in ad credits donated by Facebook to reach 27M people with 47M impressions. There’s more to come! As countries like Cambodia, Benin, Philippines, Pakistan, and 15 other countries start rolling out their vaccine public service announcements on Facebook, we’ll learn a lot more about what works, what doesn’t, and who is changing their minds about vaccines.
What changed?
- People feel safer about vaccines. In the US, 427,000 more people believe that COVID-19 vaccines are safe after seeing CARE’s PSAs;
- More people think vaccines are important. 358,509 more people believe that COVID-19 vaccines are important after seeing CARE’s PSAs; and
- People are more likely to accept vaccines. Combined, that means more than 785,000 people changed their minds about COVID-19 vaccines.
- Context matters—states with high vaccine acceptance saw the most change. Overall, messages were most effective in states that already had high vaccine acceptance. More than 367,213 people who changed their minds lived in states with higher vaccine acceptance.
- People can get more information. In the Philippines, people are clicking from CARE’s messages to the Ministry of Health to learn more about how to access a vaccine. In Cambodia, the messages combine with Facebook groups, Facebook Messenger, and in-person visits to garment factories so people who see the announcements can ask questions and get more information.
How did It happen?
- Do your homework. CARE used sessions with Facebook and rapid online studies to learn more about what messages were effective. For example, CARE USA also applied the UNICEF Vaccine Messaging Guide best practice of using a trusted messenger (healthcare worker) based on the Johns Hopkins COVID Preventative Survey data in the campaign.
- Target your audiences. CARE looked at where vaccine acceptance was higher or lower based on Carnegie Mellon data from the COVIDCAST map to segment and target different audiences by vaccine acceptance rates on the Facebook platform, and used the messages that are most likely to work with different people.
- Time your information. In the Philippines, the team used messages Facebook promoting the vaccines while people were registering for vaccines—even before people were able to get vaccines—so that when vaccines were available, people were ready to go. In Pakistan, the team is timing messages to Eid celebrations to remind people to be careful about traveling and social distancing during big celebrations.
- Check what works. In the Philippines, the highest performing ads are the ones about vaccine side effects, and the messengers that work are everyday people saying “I got my vaccine, and here’s what it’s like,” or health workers talking about the experience. In the US, messages that talk about vaccines being safe AND effective were most likely to change people’s minds.
- Make it possible to follow up. In Cambodia, the team is combining online messaging with in-person visits to at-risk groups so people can ask questions and get more information.
- Make it beautiful. Artwork matters. Having creative visuals that express a clear message make a difference. Focusing on the message, rather than on CARE branding, was more successful in getting people to pay attention.
- Pay attention to the community of commenters. CARE USA also used the “Choose Who Can Comment” feature after learning the hard way upon campaign launch that the politicized nature of the COVID vaccine in the US context would generate hundreds of negative/anti-vaxx comments. Limiting who could comment protected people from misinformation associated with the vaccine.
What’s next?
19 CARE country teams are launching or continuing their vaccine campaigns on Facebook, and will be checking to see what works, who’s engaging, and what we can do to promote vaccines worldwide.