Blue Shield of CA Direct Mail Artist + Community Outreach
Christina Vanvuren
Art, health, and community during COVID-19
Blue Shield of California’s Wellvolution lifestyle medicine program has relied on us since 2018 to deliver authentic community engagement. In addition to our ongoing support for messaging, events, bilingual PSAs, internal and external materials, we delivered an artist collaboration project for COVID-19 outreach to high-risk members this year.
Pivoting after an event strategy for the summer was canceled, we quickly identified and collaborated with eight diverse women local artists, each with strong community and social reach in their county, to create a custom artwork around the themes of prevention and food-as- medicine. Art print postcards were delivered to over 250,000 mailboxes in the state in addition to an integrated cross-channel online campaign that included a social media sharing toolkit. The campaign resulted in a 53% increase in new traffic and 46% increase in enrollments in digital health prevention tools.
About the project
To bring this creative, impactful direct mail campaign to life for Blue Shield of California, we partnered with female artists from 8 different California communities to create custom illustrations that represent Blue Shield’s mission of helping its members live healthier lives, while paying tribute to each neighborhood’s local identity.
The primary goal of this project was to help Blue Shield’s member population—especially high-risk members who live with chronic disease, are overweight or are in a disadvantaged socioeconomic situation. The majority of this audience is between ages 35-64. With COVID-19 forcing social distancing, this demographic faces an even higher risk of social isolation, loneliness, and increased mental and physical health concerns.
By receiving this postcard (that’s also a gorgeous, custom illustrated piece of art) from Blue Shield, we hoped the member would 1) feel more connected to their community and 2) be encouraged to build healthy habits, ideally by using Blue Shield’s free Wellvolution platform — which can also serve as a conduit for connection. We tapped into local pride, community values, and self-esteem to spark action toward exercising, eating well, managing stress, stopping smoking, and even reversing diseases like type II diabetes.
For inspiration, we turned to the long history of local artists contributing their creativity to promotional and educational materials in times of crisis. Artists got involved as a way to support their community, bring people together, and help people stay healthy. For reference, we pointed them to posters for victory gardens, polio research, and other public health campaigns in the United States—materials that are beautiful, motivational, and became a lasting piece of history.
Blue Shield of California reached over 250,000 members across California with these postcards, as well as hundreds of thousands more online via press, blogs, and social media content.
Our work included:
Pivoted original plan of a California mural ‘tour’ after COVID-19 hit into a direct mail campaign that achieved the goal of aligning Blue Shield as a partner for the health of their member’s communities, providing additional resources for high-acuity members to access during coronavirus, and promoting social distancing while encouraging connection
Sourced and onboarded talented female artists from five different communities whose work embodies the mission of making California healthier
Crafted detailed artist guidelines and licensing agreements that provided an easy to understand structure that met all of Blue Shield’s stringent brand and legal requirements
Reviewed and provided feedback for artists and coordinated with Blue Shield to get final artwork approved
Sourced printing company and arranged for distribution of 500,000 postcards
Built out a strategic cross-channel content distribution plan to ensure maximum reach of the project to Blue Shield’s internal team and online audience
Crafted a comprehensive PR strategy, earning Blue Shield the attention of key local media outlets
Planned follow up mural tour to be implemented when stay-at-home orders are lifted
Community and Artist Quotes
My uncle has blue shield, I’m so going to brag about you 😄😄😄 — Janet, Instagram, Kern County
Through healthy habits we can care for our minds, body and souls. The healthier we are as humans the healthier our world can become. — Creative Crossing, Instagram, Kern County
Your artwork is so uplifting! A great choice by blue shield to select you as one of the featured artists :-) 🌈 — Susanne Marczak, Instagram, San Diego
Love! I’ll share with my team, as BSCA is in my company’s program 🤗 — Carolyn, Instagram, Orange County
I LOVE LOVE LOVE this! Can we borrow the idea for here in Kentucky? — Dennis Dailey, Kentucky, mHealth Times
Wonderful idea and we're so glad you worked with Belen! We love her work! If you'd like to do more projects like this, please reach out to us - we have a huge network of artists in the IE that we can tap into to produce more important public outreach and wellness campaigns like this. It's so great you're using art to do it!! — Arts Connection, The Arts Council of San Bernardino, LinkedIn
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Posted Mar 9, 2022
Art, health, and community during COVID-19 Photos and final details can be viewed here. Blue Shield of California’s Wellvolution lifestyle medicine program has…
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