WA's 'Don’t Assume You’re Immune' via 303 MullenLowe, Mediahub, Carat

To tackle vaccine misinformation.

The WA Department of the Premier and Cabinet and Department of Health is tackling vaccine misinformation, through a public awareness campaign created by 303MullenLowe, Mediahub and Carat WA. 

The Don’t Assume You’re Immune campaign aims to educate the public about the importance of vaccines, encourage people to get vaccinated as per the WA immunisation schedule – and raise awareness of the potentially life threatening complications of vaccine-preventable diseases.

303 MullenLowe has developed the campaign to drive medium and long-term behaviour change around immunisation, through strategy, creative and production. The appointment to the account was made following a competitive pitch.

Mediahub was tasked with media strategy, collaborating with Carat WA which developed the channel implementation plan for the integrated campaign. 

It is live from this week for the next 12-months across TV, online video, social media, large and small format OOH, radio (targeted and mainstream), press, cinema, high impact digital displays and search.

303 MullenLowe Perth’s chief strategy officer Matt Oakley said with complacency, low perceived risk of disease, and misconceptions around possible side effects among the biggest barriers to vaccine uptake, the campaign’s message has been developed with “a strong sense of compassion rather than compliance”. 

“The subject of vaccinations is clouded by misinformation and disinformation, so it makes behaviour change challenging. One of the biggest barriers to vaccine take-up is a sense of complacency – essentially, 'it’ll never happen to me', so demonstrating that complacency has very real consequences was an important element to address,” he said.

“As a result, Sara Oteri (ECD) and the creative team flipped the many excuses for not getting immunised as the very reason why people should get vaccinated. The campaign’s tagline of Don’t Assume You’re Immune is not just a memorable mnemonic, but also a call to action for our target audiences that we hope will increase the perceived risk to the health of themselves, and crucially, their loved ones.” 

Mediahub Perth’s GM Kylie Macey said a key role in delivering campaign effectiveness was to ensure all media aligned with the identified stages of behaviour change.

"Having the right mix of channels meant that we could firstly capture the general population’s attention and subsequently raise their motivation. Secondly, we needed to fill knowledge gaps by giving answers and capability to key segments. And finally, we needed to demonstrate the opportunity to take action with disease specific creative," she said.

Carat WA client partner, Michelle Testa said the campaign is grounded in fusing behaviour change principles with metrics of attention to jolt the community into action.

"Whilst a robust digital strategy shifts that attention to building trust and action through pairing data signals to match content and audience. This campaign demonstrates the power of collaboration for the public good and Carat WA is pleased it could play a part in such an important community initiative," Testa said.