During the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic in the United States, we created Count on Me NC – a public health initiative for the state-run North Carolina tourism board, utilizing a grant from the state of North Carolina meant to encourage residents and businesses across the state to follow national CDC safety guidelines – wear a face covering, wash your hands, and socially distance.

We reminded apathetic North Carolina residents that there are consequences to ignoring Coronavirus safety guidelines. We used a TV spot at the core of the campaign with a theme song that underscores an animated story of a likeable curmudgeon named Sunny who suffers from a series of calamities caused by an annoying fly. However, the calamity-causing fly turns out to be the Coronavirus, illustrating the point that there are consequences to ignoring the guidelines. After learning his lesson from his encounter with the Coronavirus, Sunny takes his new-found understanding beyond the TV spot to a multi-channel campaign inviting our audience to sign on and do their part.

With the Coronavirus, we knew we weren’t just fighting a pandemic. As the World Health Organization said, we were fighting an infodemic, a flood of negative and inaccurate information causing so much uncertainty that people were ignoring safety guidelines and tuning out the Coronavirus altogether. So while the infodemic went low, we went high with a lighthearted approach designed to cut through the infodemic noise.

Over a six-month period, North Carolina residents were surrounded by our message. We established the campaign's unforgettable theme song and main character on TV before extending the campaign to Pandora radio, pre-roll, and paid social. Then we went to one of the places where residents needed to correct their behavior most – restaurants. Across the state, when people entered restaurant bathrooms, motion detectors played our song while posters reinforced our safety message to this captive audience. Eventually, once the theme song became familiar to our audience, we created a contest on Soundcloud where fans got a chance to remix their own version of it. All of the channels drove residents to our landing page where they could find a list of businesses that had participated in a safety-training course that we developed in partnership with NC State University.

Not only did all of North Carolina's 100 counties and over 4000 businesses adopt the program, even the governor of North Carolina joined in. The campaign earned over 228 million organic impressions – in North Carolina alone. It generated a 250% increase in awareness, including a 400% increase among 18-34 year-olds – those most likely to exhibit the riskiest behavior. But most importantly, as a result of Count on Me NC, 75% of respondents in a statewide survey said they were more likely to wear a mask.