Healthdirect Australia launches new integrated ‘Get COVID clarity’ campaign via Bastion

A collaborative effort across the breadth of Bastion services has delivered a wide-ranging integrated campaign for Healthdirect Australia, which is funded by the Australian Government Department of Health, to help people manage their health during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The national campaign is designed to help all Australians know that if they are otherwise healthy and vaccinated, they are likely to be able to manage their COVID symptoms and recovery at home, with advice and support from national public health information services, National Coronavirus Helpline and healthdirect.gov.au.

The campaign’s ‘Get COVID clarity’ positioning was led by a need for a creative platform that would cut through the sheer amount of COVID information available. It focuses on providing clear answers to common health questions about COVID symptoms, isolation, and recovery, positioning the National Coronavirus Helpline and healthdirect.gov.au as trusted sources of COVID health information.

Bastion developed a turn-key solution across every aspect of communication, all delivered in house through an integrated approach across strategy, creative, media, PR, digital, including outreach to culturally and linguistically diverse parts of the population.

Says Jenni Ellard, head of communications and marketing, Healthdirect Australia: “The Bastion team jumped into action very quickly to get our campaign to market across multiple channels just as the information was needed during the rising COVID numbers in early 2022. The team continues to be super responsive, coordinated, and easy to work with post-launch across multiple service areas.”

Bastion delivered more than 276 individual assets in just seven weeks, including 35 digital videos, 12 radio executions, 100 digital display outputs, 35 animated programmatic digital OOH pieces and 96 multicultural assets in 17 languages and, with in-built flexibility to update creative messages as needed to remain relevant over the nine-month campaign period.

Bastion partnered with CulturalPulse, a multicultural insights agency, media network and adtech platform. The campaign engages multicultural communities to ensure messaging is accessible to culturally and linguistically diverse audiences, which was deemed critical to campaign success after low vaccine take up in some segments. Reaching multicultural communities was a key criteria for Healthdirect to define campaign reach to all Australians in their first language.

Says Jack Watts, CEO, Bastion: “It’s a perfect demonstration of the value of Bastion’s new world agency model. A single business with complementary service offerings working together to deliver integrated client work.”

The campaign launched recently and will run for nine months.

CLIENT: Healthdirect Australia
Head of Communications & Marketing: Jenni Ellard

AGENCY: Bastion

Bastion Creative
Executive Creative Director: Georgia Arnott
Creative Director: Laurence Cronin
Creative Director: Scott Hopkin
Design Director: Samantha Suyono
Planning Director: Sarah King
Client Partner: Andrew Henderson
Senior Account Director: Luke Haddrick
Senior Producers: Darren Gibson, Angelita Gandakusuma

Bastion Interactive
Digital Director: Richard Lloyd
Executive Producer: Ryville Ochoa
Digital Producer: Paige McLaren
Digital and Motion Designers: Vince Leong, Welton Zhao, Belle Truong

Bastion Films
CEO: Jacqueline Archer
Director: Jean Christophe Danoy
Post Production: Bastion Films collab with Punk Atomic
Sound Record, Mix & Music Composition: Smith and Western
Sound Executive Producer: Dan Smith
Illustrations: Lilianne Darmo

Bastion Amplify
Senior Account Director: Nancy McDonald

MULTICULTURAL: CulturalPulse
CEO: Reg Raghavan
General Manager: Jake Swarts
Chief Creative Officer: Patrick Skene

MEDIA AGENCY: Hatched
Managing Partner: Adrian Roeling
Digital Manager: Cindy Luu
Senior Media Manager: Bronte Clarke
Senior Media Exec: Laylaa Khan