As part of a broad campaign to demonstrate support and compassion for not only our students, faculty, and staff, but also our larger local community of roughly 100,000 people, Chico State designed two billboard displays in strategic, high-traffic areas at opposite ends of the city of Chico that were seen by thousands of motorists each day for six weeks during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. The billboards featured words of hope, strength, and resilience as encouragement in dealing with the challenges of a quickly growing health concern that to date has tragically resulted in nearly 11,000 COVID-19 cases and 169 deaths in our county, which has a population of only 219,000.
Chico State is known for caring deeply about the local community, which has experienced great hardships in the recent past—including enduring the most destructive and deadly wildfire in California’s history, the Camp Fire, just two years ago, and a widespread evacuation in anticipation of the failure of the Lake Oroville dam auxiliary spillway. The billboards helped continue the university’s long history of giving back locally and supporting a community-wide spirit of resilience.
From the Judges
We were impressed with the team’s use of resources on a short timeline, and their idea to repurpose an existing channel to avoid losing money. This billboard not only served hope to the community, but it also gave positive exposure to the university through local media coverage. We also were happy to see successful tie to metrics.
