LISTOS CALIFORNIA

Context:

Mozaic provided public relations, messaging support, wrote and distributed news releases and opinion pieces, and facilitated advertising placement buys for a statewide emergency preparedness, turned Covid-19 public awareness and mitigation effort. Listos California is a statewide disaster-readiness public awareness campaign launched in 2019, by the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (CalOES). It was coined the state's official and

first-of-its-kind initiative aimed at providing vulnerable populations with lifesaving information to survive wildfires, earthquakes and other natural disasters - and most notably, the COVID-19 pandemic.

Approach:

Originally designed as a traditional public affairs, communications, and community outreach campaign to reach California’s most often overlooked residents, Listos California quickly turned into a rapid-response, emergency communications apparatus providing resources and up-to-the-minute communication in several languages. Mozaic was primarily focused on building communications capacity with Listos California’s statewide network of community based organization grantees to generate real-people stories of hope and impact in hyperlocal  news outlets in priority counties determined by campaign research and data.

We utilized earned media to generate buzz and credibility for the campaign, while also reaching populations of interest through ethnic media publications. This included:

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• Print, including full-length stories, opinion/commentaries and general media mentions

• TV spots in primetime or on evening and morning news shows

• Radio interviews

• Press conferences
   

Our earned media strategy focused on strategic relationship-building, identifying and targeting publications read by the campaign’s key demographics of interest, cultivating partnerships, gauging and replicating story successes to expand earned media reach.

 

Additionally, our team worked to support campaign community based grantees in learning how to create and place buzz-worthy news stories. The approach was to create a short-list of the highest-performing grantees who were interested in earning media and then to work with them to create newsworthy ideas and events in partnership together. While there was a significant learning curve in the beginning, with the direct support from campaign leadership, we identified which grantees had the bandwidth and appetite to drive earned media.

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To maximize earned media across the state, our team also created and delivered tailored media training to dozens of these community partner groups, many with no prior media relations experience. Even during a time of unprecedented demands on news organizations, the campaign garnered attention from local, regional and national media outlets.

This enabled community groups to give voice to the campaign’s significance in their neighborhoods, while also educating a broader audience.

Outcome:

We supplemented this by facilitating media buys and also formed partnerships with Univision, PBS, and various ethnic media outlets across the state, to further spread campaign messaging across the state in real time along with the Governor’s daily noon briefings. Furthermore, we fielded reporter calls as we assisted in the rollout of the campaign’s focus on social bridging (engaging isolated seniors), California’s immigrant communities and access to other pandemic relief resources. We also developed proactive media outlines at a moment’s notice to pivot messaging that was changing by the Governor’s Office on a regular basis. As a result of our efforts, we secured 255 pieces of earned media stories representing an ad equivalency of $3.5 million. A snapshot of  these earned media placements can be found here.