Federal Employee Program Campaign

The problem

Every year during open enrollment, BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina’s Federal Employee Program team holds benefits fairs to help South Carolina’s federal and postal employees understand their updated health plans and coverage options. The team needed a campaign to raise awareness and bring people to those events, in post office break rooms, federal buildings, and mailboxes across South Carolina.

Postal workers and office-based federal employees are different audiences. The campaign had to speak to both while staying inside the national BlueCross BlueShield Federal Employee Program brand.

My role

As art director, I led the campaign from concept to print. I developed the messaging with a copywriter and set the look and feel. I directed our in-house illustrator, who created the artwork. Then I designed the final posters and postcards: the layout, the type, and the branding over the artwork.

The approach

Messaging. The line honors the audience first: “You’ve served others. Now let us serve you.” For postal workers it became “You’ve delivered for others. Now let us deliver for you.” One idea, adapted for each audience.

A National Parks look. I found a classic National Parks travel poster and loved its colors and warmth. I used it as the starting point and blended in BlueCross BlueShield’s navy, teal, and logo lockup, so the posters feel like a public service poster and still read as BlueCross.

Illustration. The scenes started as AI-generated concepts combined with stock imagery. It took many rounds to get the people and places right. Our in-house illustrator then finished every drawing by hand in one consistent style: a male and a female letter carrier for post offices, and a federal office worker in front of domed government buildings for agency break rooms.

Built for local contact. The posters were digitally printed with a data merge, so each copy carried the name, phone number, and email of the local agent for that location. One design reached the whole state, and every poster pointed people to someone nearby. The two letter carrier versions alternated through the print run, so post offices got a mix.

Postcards carried the same artwork to members’ homes, with a QR code on the back inviting them to free webinars with benefit experts.

The result

More than 500 posters went up in every post office and federal building break room in South Carolina, each with its own local contact. The postcards reached 3,000 to 4,000 South Carolina federal employees through the Federal Employee Program’s mailing list.