There’s More To The Funeral Home ‘Don’t Get Vaccinated’ Truck That’s Going Viral
Image via BooneOakley
During Sunday’s Carolina Panthers game at the Bank of America Stadium, a black truck looped the building rather ominously, as if filling in the role of a prophetic messenger.
Its message was clearly stated on the digital billboards on the sides of the vehicle: “Don’t get vaccinated.” But underneath that, the name, phone number, and website of a funeral home were printed.
Going to the website takes you to a landing page for a fictional ‘Wilmore Funeral Home’, which tells you the opposite. “Get vaccinated,” reads the button, which will lead you to a signup page for StarMed’s vaccination services. “If not,” the subtitle continues, “see you soon.”
Excellent marketing tactic: Wilmore Funeral Home making laps around BofA stadium today.
— Andrew Kiel (@AndrewKiel) September 19, 2021
💉 https://t.co/fYRuWLwrQl
cc @TheLarsonPage https://t.co/chdm3PuTgy
And now...
— Avinash Kaushik (@avinash) September 21, 2021
A message from Wilmore Funeral Home...#advertising pic.twitter.com/28QF2Mk5HM
@RexChapman @davenewworld_2 This truck is making laps around Bank of America Stadium before the Panthers game in Charlotte. pic.twitter.com/rIW9OTltK5
— d (@yourgeniushands) September 19, 2021
When it went viral on Twitter, no one knew what was going on: if the funeral home was a real business (it wasn’t), who was behind it, and why the truck was in existence. Even StarMed had no idea why its name had been used in the campaign. For an entire day, conspiracies swirled.
But all was revealed by a local advertising agency, BooneOakley, on its Twitter page on Tuesday.
It was us. Get vaccinated. pic.twitter.com/WFQ1h6sLwn
— BooneOakley (@booneoakley) September 21, 2021
The firm’s president David Oakley told the Washington Post that the agency came up with this idea while discussing who would benefit from the unvaccinated catching COVID-19 and possibly not surviving it.
“Everything that’s being done right now is pretty straightforward—‘get the shot,’ ‘get vaccinated today’,” Oakley explained. “It was a different way of going about the message.” He also revealed that the team chose StarMed because it had been a “major force” in the vaccine and testing push in that area, not because the two firms had any partnership.
Chris Dobbins, StarMed’s chief of relations and response, details that web traffic has spiked on the company’s vaccine and testing pages after the truck went viral online.
And the company’s chief medical officer, Arin Piramzadian, tells the Charlotte Observer that he’s “100 percent for it” if the campaign manages to save a single life.
[via The Washington Post, image via BooneOakley]
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