Safe Socializing Campaign

College students’ social lives, academic trajectory and well-being were enormously impacted by the coronavirus pandemic. When planning for a safe return to campus, among the greatest concerns for Ohio University administration was student adherence to public health and safety guidelines.

Armed with my previous experience with alcohol and sexual health education, I led a cross-team collaboration to develop a variety of content across various channels with the goal of normalizing safety practices. I was deliberate in adding a bit of whimsy and humor that have proven successful with safe sex campaigns.

Content variations were used across all channels – in-person posters, banners, digital screens, student newspaper print edition and website advertisements, and of course, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. What resulted was highest rates of engagement compared to other previously shared public health and safety direction, as well as some chatter across influencer channels and peer institutions about the cheekiness of the campaign. Our goal of garnering attention and generating peer-to-peer dialogue about the issues was achieved.

In addition to the one-liner attention grabbing content, we followed up with our email and social media audiences with student dialogue videos (both short- and long-form) that featured user-generated quality student zoom conversations about issues of health and safety on and off campus.

As many professionals experienced during the pandemic, this project was something I never thought I would do, but I feel a high level of satisfaction with the result. I was reminded of how quality work is achieved in a high pressure environment – with confidence in your team members and a level head – one step at a time.

Role call: Design by Nicole Lovins. Writing, video and art direction by Hailee Tavoian. Social media deployment by Alexandria Polanosky and Steph Fiorelli. Creative consultation by Kailee Slusser and Aaron Harden.

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