Case Study

Washington Health Benefit Exchange:

Closing the gap on uninsured populations in Washington

Challenge

The Washington Health Benefit Exchange (the Exchange) helps Washingtonians secure health insurance during an annual Open Enrollment period. Quinn Thomas has helped the Exchange market their Open Enrollment period for the past five seasons. More Washingtonians than ever are insured on the Exchange, but many Washingtonians are still uninsured, most residing in rural areas. Affordability as measured by high premiums and high cost-sharing remain the primary barriers to more Washingtonians being insured and getting access to care. Beyond the health insurance marketplace, fall 2022 posed a new and challenging marketing environment to navigate thanks to the continuing aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic, Family Glitch, ARPA continuing or ending, implementing Cascade Care Savings and the Public Health Emergency unwinding.

Approach

To bring awareness to the tenth Open Enrollment period, the Exchange enlisted Quinn Thomas to develop and execute an integrated marketing communications campaign. We approached our audiences as two distinct segments: the general population including traditionally underserved and hard-to-reach communities, and targeted outreach to the large Hispanic population in hard-to-reach communities in Central and Eastern Washington. We reached these audiences through longer form educational marketing strategies that built trust. We deployed a multi-channel paid media strategy, rolled out a 10-city roadshow in key areas, created a toolkit of materials to support outreach and engaged with trusted online influencers and third-party community organizations to broaden our reach. This year, we also refreshed our creative, using custom photography and incorporated transcreation consultation into our creative concepting process to ensure our campaign culturally resonated with our English- and Spanish-speaking audiences.

Results

Our efforts exceeded client goals of the marketing campaign:

70

million total offline and online impressions

100k+

home page views

5.7k

plan confirmations from digital ads

Services provided for this project:

  • Communications strategy
  • Creative services
  • Design
  • Digital marketing
  • Social media

Awards: PRSA Silver Anvil for best healthcare marketing campaign of consumer products, 2020

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