"Don’t Get Vaccinated": BooneOakley’s Game Day Campaign

Students that read the news or maintain a daily scroll through TikTok may have caught a glimpse this week of a truck sporting the message, “Don’t Get Vaccinated- Wilmore Funeral Home”. Rest assured theirs weren’t the only heads the advertisement turned.

As the Panthers took on the Saints in the September 19th NFL game, the truck made laps around the Bank of America Stadium and some of downtown Charlotte, North Carolina. The message caught the eyes of locals and tailgaters alike.

Images of the truck quickly went viral on social media, initially in response to the funeral home’s seemingly brash and novel tactics to get people vaccinated. The company’s website directs visitors to StarMed Healthcare, a Charlotte-based COVID-19 vaccine provider.

Two days after the truck’s appearance, the next part of the story unfolded: Wilmore Funeral Home doesn’t actually exist. The message was part of an ad campaign created and funded by BooneOakley, a local advertising agency.

“It was us. Get vaccinated.”, BooneOakley tweeted, along with a photo of the truck in front of the company’s building.

David Oakley, the owner of BooneOakley, said the idea for the ad campaign came about during a discussion about who would most benefit from people not getting the vaccine. BooneOakley aims to have creative and ambitious campaigns, hence the controversial approach to their campaign with StarMed Healthcare.

“I was a little bit worried before we started,” said Oakley in an interview with WBTV in regard to whether the ad may come across as insensitive, “but when I really think about it, if this advertisement gets one person vaccinated, it was worth it.”

Oakley and his team created the advertisement with the intent to make it different from other pro-vaccine ads. He said that most of the pro-vaccine ads they had seen were fairly simple and similar to one another. His team wanted to take on coronavirus vaccinations from a unique perspective.

BooneOakley created the idea for the funeral home ad independently, and pitched it to StarMed Healthcare. The campaign was independently funded by BooneOakley as well.

The brief ad campaign did make a significant impact. According to USA Today, North Carolina is one of 17 states in the county where less than half of the population has received a full COVID-19 vaccination.

StarMed Healthcare tweeted on September 23 that they saw a 22 percent increase in registration for vaccine appointments, which they largely credited to BooneOakley’s advertisement.

“I think any advertisement that is provocative is going to create a dialogue and when you get people talking, people have action, and I’m hoping that the action is people will get the shot because of this,” said Oakley to WBTV.

Although Oakley at first felt the ad campaign may be risky, it ultimately paid off, gaining not only local, but national attention for his company and for his cause.