COUNCIL bosses spent £10,000 on a campaign which saw social media influencers push social distancing measures and mask wearing rules on Instagram.

A host of influencers, with thousands of followers each, were recruited by Southend Council to post a series of comedic and moving posts to their social media channels.

The campaign – Protect Your Fam – was designed to help promote messages surrounding social distancing, hand washing and using face masks during the pandemic.

Influencers including actor Anto Sharp, Youtubers Jammidodger – otherwise known as Jamie Raines – and Shaaba Lotun, along with fitness blogger Elle Linton were all involved – boasting 285,000 followers between them.

Trevor Harp, cabinet member for health and adult social care, says the Protect Your Fam campaign was first launched to remind the younger generation of the potential risk of bringing the virus home to their loved ones.

He said: “Something we found was that some of the younger generation had the attitude of ‘Covid doesn’t affect me much and if it does I’m not likely to have any severe health issues from it’ – but if you’re not following measures properly, there is the risk that you could bring it home and infect your family.

“That was the message we wanted to get across, which arguably has never been more important than now, so we thought this could be the best way to do it and decided to trial it. It turns out it went pretty well.

“These influencers are from across all sorts of social media platforms, whether it’s Instagram, Tik Tok, some I haven’t even heard of or ever used before.

“There is so much out there now, and so this was our way of engaging with them.

“There was something like 153,000 impressions - so that’s people who have viewed it - for each person that did and the amount we spent on the campaign, it works out less than a second class stamp, so it has been quite cost effective too.”

Bosses say the campaign, which was particularly aimed at 18 to 22-year-olds, has raked in 25,000 engagements - including people replying, liking and responding to it’s content.

The project - which overall cost £10,000 and involved six influencers altogether - was paid for using the council’s national outbreak control funding, as part of their response to the pandemic.

And Krishna Ramkhelawon, director of public health, says the campaign helped to reach those who don’t usually look at the council’s social media feeds whilst keeping Covid cases down in the town.

He explained: “We needed to deliver important messages in a fresh way, and at a time when many national and local messages on Covid-19 were being lost.

“Whilst younger age groups are less likely to become ill with Coronavirus, they are at risk of passing the disease onto older members of their family. And so the influencers delivered personalised messages that would resonate with their audiences.

“We also ran the campaign across our own social media platforms to broaden the audience and target those who do follow our channels.

“It’s been well received with good engagement levels, and we are currently analysing the results to see if it is something we can run again in the future.

“We believe it has contributed to keeping the overall case rate in Southend down, along with protecting those aged 60 and over. We will continue to consider and try innovative and non-traditional methods to get these important messages out as we continue to fight the virus.”