The Illinois Dept. of Public Health wants to hire a firm to handle PR, advertising and marketing in support of its response to and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is looking for a well-established creative firm with the capabilities to create large and mid sized PR & advertising campaigns backed by data and strategy.

The campaign will fall under the “All in Illinois” initiative,  the platform to rally Illinoisans to battle the virus.

IDPH’s partner will provide communications strategy, content development, marketing materials across earned, owned, paid and social media platforms.

The outreach will have an enhanced focus on Black and brown communities that have been especially hard hit by COVID-19.

Illinois also wants to target “hard to reach audiences” including people with limited English proficiency, living close or below poverty level, experiencing homelessness, suffering domestic abuse, residing in rural areas; seniors; migrant workers; undocumented immigrants and persons with disabilities. 

“Creative concepts will  address/incorporate equity and diversity into their execution and delivery, translating materials into other languages spoken within the state, including Spanish, Polish and Chinese,” according to the RFP.

The desired firm partner will have at least 10 years of experience in handling campaigns of similar scale and scope to its RFP and a history of managing operational budgets exceeding $1M.

IDPH plans to issue a six-month contract with two six-month renewal options.

Proposals are due by 5 p.m. (CST) on June 22. They go to IDPH’s William Smith at [email protected]. 

Read the RFP (PDF).