Black Infant Health - JP Marketing Creative Highlight

JP Creative Highlight: Improving the Odds for Black Infant Health

Turning Awareness Into Impact

The statistics related to black infant mortality in California are disheartening. Decades of anti-black racism and various social and economic factors have led to higher rates of prematurity and infant mortality amongst black infants.

So, when the California Department of Public Health presented us with the opportunity to create a campaign to promote Black Infant Health (BIH), a program aimed at improving birth outcomes for black mothers and babies in our communities, we were immediately on board.

Our goal was to connect as many pregnant and post-partum black women as possible to BIH’s support and resources by encouraging them to submit an information request through online platforms, also called referrals. To turn awareness into impact, we decided to look beyond the numbers and shed light on the black mothers and babies behind those statistics.

Baby on Set!

After learning about the empowerment-focused services BIH offered, we decided that the best way to demonstrate the program’s value would be through testimonial interviews with women who had gone through the program themselves. For this, we enlisted the help of three black mothers — Kimmoni Lawrence, Vaunshaie Brown, and Tyler Martinez. We invited them to join us for a day in the park with their babies to share their pregnancy stories and explain how BIH helped them.

Their interviews revealed the incredible impact of the BIH program and gave our campaign a level of authenticity and joy that cannot be coached or scripted. The stories ranged from high-risk pregnancies and experiencing a lack of support to finding a sisterhood with other black mothers and ultimately discovering a sense of community thanks to the BIH program. Having the mothers and their babies on set really put the statistics into perspective and the JP Team almost couldn’t stand the cuteness!

Resources. Support. Sisterhood.

By the close of this campaign, JP had developed geo-focused billboards, web and social ads, radio spots, testimonials, and video content for use on digital platforms. Kimmoni, Vaunshaie, and Tyler’s stories were shared through ads on Youtube, Facebook, and even on streaming sites like Hulu, reaching thousands of mothers just like them.

Banner ad example of Black Infant Health campaign by JP Marketing — Young, pregnant African-American woman holding her stomach.Typically, we measure the success of a campaign like this one with numbers and data. While we are proud to have delivered over 30 million impressions resulting in over 3,000 program referrals, this project was about looking beyond the numbers and recognizing the lives they represent. So instead, we choose to celebrate over 3,000 black women getting one step closer to accessing the care, support, and resources they deserve and defying the statistics around black infant mortality, one pregnancy at a time.

Angelica Hernandez, Copywriter/Producer