The last thing Australia needs right now, as the Delta variant whips through Sydney, is a bandaid solution. But that’s exactly what we got. Bandaids. On anonymous arms.
Shelve for a minute the appalling mismanagement of the vaccine rollout and the fact that even if people were magically motivated to get the jab, so many of them actually can’t.
The rollout is one thing, the vaccine hesitancy another. The stats show that even if the government builds it, many won’t come. That’s why some sort of convincing ad campaign is needed.
We got “arm yourself”.
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“Arm yourself” is the catchcry of the new ad, in step with the federal government’s tendency to militarise everything. To wargame it.
Where we needed emotion, empathy, inspiration, humour and humanity, we got faceless mundanity.
There’s clear science around how good health communication works.
A recent World Economic Forum pointed out the obvious fact that poor communication in a pandemic costs lives. It also highlighted the role of empathy. This PLOS ONE study emphasises the need for emotional, first-person narratives. This British Medical Journal article talks about the need for understand hesitancy, addressing it, and responding to individual concerns.
To break through, vaccine promotion needs to outweigh the bullshit being circulated online. It needs more heft to shunt out the hyperfocus on the rare ill effects. It needs to motivate those who are complacent. It needs to, emotionally and physically, move people.
The Kiwis nail this stuff. Remember their police recruitment ad? Their vaccination material echoes that. It’s funny, it’s real, it has the ring of authenticity. The French version is hand-on-heart, moving stuff.
The UK one features Michael Caine and Elton John, ferchrissakes.
It’s rich and full of life — and relatable. Unlike Australia’s attempt, which reeks of unimaginative marketing types carrying out a tick-a-box exercise. Different-coloured arms — that’ll do it, chaps. It’s blancmange when we need bombe Alaska.
Ad guru Russel Howcroft wrote that we need a powerful message. Something to rally the troops. He also said a scare campaign could be part of that — and we do have that, now.
There’s a “graphic” — and Sydney-specific — ad that will hopefully harness what has already been shown to work: that an outbreak brings home the reality of the need for protection. Images of a woman gasping for breath (a woman who does not really look as though she’s in an eligible vaccination category, but still) could provide the motivation for some.
Meanwhile, why did the government gurus settle for a faceless Brady Bunch grid?
It’s as though they couldn’t think of an inspirational Australian who can get people to their feet, roaring. A sportsperson, perhaps — the essence of vitality and ambition. Someone who has been vaccinated, and talked about it publicly. Someone who embodied the value of a “fair go” by ensuring they didn’t skip the queue to get the jab.
A woman would be good, considering women are more likely to be hesitant. Maybe a First Nations woman who is deeply admired across the age spectrum. Yeah. Imagine if we could find someone like that to put a face to the campaign.
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It’s a miracle it’s a result of doing gods work
“A woman would be good, considering women are more likely to be hesitant. Maybe a First Nations woman who is deeply admired across the age spectrum.”
I reckon that would be good, maybe stage B, but in Stage A we need someone more Kardashian like rather than someone of actual substance. We need to get the mob moving. I’m not sure how much is hesitancy versus how much is apathy.
You need someone more than Kardashian, but Australia needed Kevin Rudd to bring the pfizer dosages forward as your man Morri$in was in a bunker.
Last month in late June, senior Australian business figures based in the United States discussed making contact with the vaccine manufacturer Pfizer to see whether it was possible for Australia to get earlier access to larger supplies of the Pfizer vaccine as the COVID-19 Delta variant emerged in Australia.
This was due to Morrison bungling its negotiations with the company in talks going back to June and July 2020, last year where Morrison’s negotiator displayed a “rude, dismissive and penny pinching” approach demanding all pfizer’s intellectual property details on the drug. Hunt and Morrison Department officials flatly denied many of these reports, but the businessmen in the US who had connections with Pfizer, were hearing even more graphic accounts of how badly offended the company had been by the response to its early approaches to Australia last year when it offered unlimited access to pfizer.
As a result, one very senior Australian businessman — whose identity is known to the ABC but who wishes to remain anonymous — held two meetings with senior Pfizer executives in late June, only to be rebuffed.
Senior Pfizer executives told the businessman that if Australia was to make a more serious effort, after its treatment at the hands of relatively junior bureaucrats, it would have to come from much higher up, expressing their astonishment that Prime Minister Scott Morrison had not directly spoken to the Pfizer chairman and chief executive Albert Bourla, as former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had done on multiple occasions.
The executives suggested that, in the absence of Mr Morrison, former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd — who was known to them because of his work in the United States as head of the New York-based Asia Society — may have some influence.
Pfizer subsequently released a statement confirming the bring forward but emphasising it did not involve an overall increase in the contracted 40 million doses agreed with Australia. [as claimed by Hunt and $in]
Pfizer’s former president of global R&D, John LaMattina, saying Morrison’s delay in securing a deal with Pfizer, and the amount Morrison eventually signed up to last November was “clearly lacking” and “unconscionable”, said former pfizer president of global research and development John LaMattina.
I don’t doubt what you say, but its shocking stuff that a nation, and it’s peoples, can be punished by a pharmaceutical company. If true, we should remember how Pfizer punished 25M uninvolved Australian people.
Having realized its error, our government should have moved on to Moderna and tried a more businesslike, conciliatory approach.
Biggest lesson here is that we need to make our own I think. Start mRNA research now, start with UOQ people who clearly are smart but didn’t get their first shot over the line.
First we need vaccines and access for all that want/need
This campaign is only shifting blame from Gov to people (most of whom would like to be vaxxed asap)
There’s clear science around how good health communication works.
Morri$in does not do science, he claps, and tongue twists and only does ‘transactional’ deals. Communication and ad campaigns? He’s failed in every job he had previously, sacked actually.
Yeah – only sacked, when he should have been jailed!
The ad was originally filmed at the end of last year ! 7 months ago! I guess Scum had to wait til after the end of the financial year to find some money to pay for its airing.
I doubt it there was plenty of car park money left over!
Why not – they’ve only built 2, apparently, so most of it should be in “the Kitty” – probably the same kitty promised for fire victims, etc, etc……