New ad campaign hopes to convince more Nevadans to get vaccine

A significant number of Nevadans are hesitant to receive a COVID-19 vaccine. A new advertisement campaign hopes it can change their minds.

R&R Partners, an advertising firm known for iconic campaigns including “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas,” is working with the state’s COVID-19 Response, Relief and Recovery Task Force to launch an initiative that stresses the importance of inoculation.

“We know that our supply here is growing, and it’s time to ramp up and get folks vaccinated,” R&R CEO Billy Vassiliadis told the Review-Journal. “What we’re trying to do is say: (If) you get vaccinated, if all of us get vaccinated, we’ll be able to return to (normal) very soon.”

Upcoming campaign rollout

Gov. Steve Sisolak will need to give his final approval before the campaign can launch, but the head of R&R said the rollout could begin as soon as next week.

A spokeswoman for the governor’s office did not respond to a request for comment.

Previous COVID-19 campaigns in Nevada have focused on taking health-conscious steps to protect the community. R&R’s new campaign is flipping that on its head, and telling Nevadans exactly what vaccinations could do for them.

“It’s very focused on giving individuals a tangible reason to go,” Vassiliadis said. “(It’s getting people to understand that) if you do this, these good things happen to you.”

Incentives include returning to school or shows in-person, being able to hug grandchildren and filling casino floors.

R&R provided mock-ups that are subject to change but show messaging like “No more wondering how close the person behind you is” on grocery store floor graphics, like those currently used to mark social distancing, and “No more closed businesses” in the windows of shuttered storefronts. The advertisements are available in English and Spanish and would be shown on billboards, social media platforms and more.

The group also plans to offer messaging to local businesses such as casino-resorts that they can display in their back-of-house areas, where employees would take notice.

“Hopefully, over a fairly brief period of time, you’ll see one of these messages at the airport or on a billboard or in collateral material and it’ll be instantly recognizable and a reminder that help is on the way in the form of broad spread vaccinations,” task force chair Jim Murren said.

Much of the campaign’s funding has been donated, according to Murren. Whatever expenses remain will be covered by the task force.

“There’s no expense to the taxpayer,” Murren said. “R&R (and other groups) have donated thousands of hours in unlimited, it seems like, effort to this.”

Changing minds

A Surgo Ventures survey found about 60 percent of Americans are identified as “less likely” to take a vaccine due to a variety of concerns. But a majority of those Americans — about 43 percent of the more than 2,700 surveyed in December and January — were labeled as “persuadable,” meaning they could be convinced that getting inoculated is the right move to overcome the global pandemic.

Vassiliadis said Nevada’s numbers were “pretty consistent” with, if not a little less than, the national survey’s findings. R&R hopes its messaging resonates with the “persuadable” demographic.

“One of the things that we’ve sort of realized early on in this is that folks need to feel that there’s a reason to do things. That (vaccinations) will help them, their family, protect their job,” Vassiliadis said. “It’s the last step. We’ve been going through a year of masking and not going to a show or a baseball game… You need to take the last step so you can free yourself, so you can do these things.”

The campaign strives to convince enough Nevadans vaccinated to reach herd immunity. Experts have estimated that somewhere between 70 and 85 percent of the population will need to build up resistance to the virus for this to occur.

Murren said the task force recognizes that 100 percent inoculation rates in Nevada are unlikely.

“There will be a segment of the population that will be unaffected by this campaign, unfortunately,” he said. “But we’re shooting for the majority of Nevadans that recognize that this is a collective effort to help our community recover from a health perspective, which means we can recover from an economic perspective.”

Contact Bailey Schulz at bschulz@reviewjournal.com. Follow @bailey_schulz on Twitter. Contact Mike Shoro at mshoro@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290. Follow @mike_shoro on Twitter.