NATIONAL ENGAGEMENT CAMPAIGN

PROJECT Overview

Project

National Engagement Campaign

Client

Alameda County Public Health Department, Oakland, CA
Bay Area Nutrition & Physical Activity Collaborative, San Francisco, CA

Role

Campaign Strategist + Creative Director + Multicultural Marketing Lead

We led strategy, creative direction, and campaign execution, building a system designed not to reach audiences, but to move them.

Introduction

A Multi-Channel Public Health Campaign

MyGroove Design, Inc. worked on one of Alameda County’s most successful branded health initiatives, “Soda Free Summer.” The campaign applied a mix of Influencer Marketing, Content Marketing, Experiential Branding, Data Analytics, and Visual Storytelling to shift behavior and reduce soda consumption across diverse communities.

Objective

Behavior Change Through Strategic, Accessible Campaign Design

The goal was to reduce soda consumption by leveraging community voices, in-person activations, and targeted storytelling. We ensured all digital assets were optimized for both desktop and mobile, enabling the public to easily access campaign resources, community events, and health information.

The Strategy

Alameda County Public Health came up with a challenge most campaigns get wrong. They didn't want awareness. They wanted measurable behavior change across Latino and African-American communities, adults, children, and families throughout the Bay Area.

That required a fundamentally different kind of strategy. One built on community insight, cultural fluency, and the science of how behavior actually shifts. Behavior change doesn't happen in ads. It happens in communities when a message meets people in every part of their daily lives simultaneously.

We built a five-channel system: Influencer Storytelling, Content Marketing, Experiential Branding, Data Analytics, and Visual Storytelling. Each channel reinforced the others. The goal was cultural saturation with precision. Not noise. Resonance.

The most counterintuitive, and most effective, insight in this work: we didn't target adults directly. We gave children a language for healthy choices through the "Drink Water, Said the Otter" activity books, wristbands, and community events, and let them become the influence that shifted adult behavior.

Because that is how behavior actually changes in families.

Approach

Adults, children, and families were targeted during the program development phase, with a focus on the Latino and African-American communities. We created an experiential, digital media, and social marketing campaign to reduce soda consumption, which included interactive events, tracking logs, information on healthier alternatives, and fun incentives such as wristbands, stickers, and temporary tattoos. The results were astounding, with 78% of county residents recalling the campaign and 72% reporting a change in health behavior. Furthermore, 43 percent of respondents reported drinking less soda than they did before the campaign began.

We expanded our reach to five more Bay Area counties as the campaign gained traction: Contra Costa, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo, and Santa Clara. It even gained national recognition, and was adopted by many county public health departments throughout the United States. This was made possible by additional funding from Kaiser Permanente, Health Trust of Silicon Valley, Shape Up San Francisco, The California Endowment, and the Alameda County Public Health Department. We continued to coordinate the expansion through the Bay Area Nutrition and Physical Activity Collaborative (BANPAC) and distributed Rethink Your Drink materials through California Nutrition Network regions.

The "Drink Water, Said the Otter" activity books were a huge hit with young children and helped to spread the campaign's message even further. We also continued to use social media channels to reach even more people, and even held a YouTube Video Contest to encourage creativity and campaign engagement.

Outcomes

Overall, the "Soda Free Summer" campaign was a game-changer in the field of public health. It not only helped to reduce soda consumption in Alameda County, but it also had a ripple effect, inspiring people all over the country to reconsider their beverage choices.

MyGroove Design® was able to make a significant impact on the health and well-being of communities across the country, and it continues to be a shining example of the power of innovative branding and design strategies.

78% of residents recalled the campaign
72% reported a measurable shift in health behavior
43% reduced their soda consumption
Expanded from Alameda County to 6 Bay Area counties
Adopted as a national model

These are not awareness metrics. They are behavior metrics. When strategy is built on community insight and cultural fluency, the results hold and scale.