The UK Government has replaced the old communications message “Stay home. Protect the NHS. Save lives” to “Stay alert. Control the virus. Save lives”, which is the first move to ease the current lockdown situation. The communications message has created a lot of public controversy and also sparked off a debate among PR practitioners – which is not very impressive.
There has also been a change of color on the messaging from red border, yellow background to a more positive green with yellow background. That is interesting because green is often thought to have strong emotional correspondence with safety, growth and freshness, meanwhile red is normally associated with danger, which makes you to pay attention to. When seeing this, do we immediately think of traffic signals which red makes you stop and green allows you to proceed? Does it say “Go”? To go or not to go, that’s a question, an important one.
This change seems to have its own message. The communications message is more relaxed and about guidance and advice, rather than previous strict rules which people have to abide to. Perhaps, it is the first move of the Government in an attempt to ease the lockdown, so the message was designed to not carry the strict feeling. However, is it really a good choice? With the current situation and current statistics, and in times of uncertainty, even the color of the message matters.
The new “Stay alert” message has its own success and failure. Right after being released from the Government on Sunday, May 10th, the message went viral on Twitter and on Trending section in the UK, which is very impressive and crucial and successful for any communications campaign. Let’s have a look at the statistics, the engagement, conversation over time and also potential reach of the hashtag “#StayAlert” on Twitter, which I did research on Talkwalker website on May 12th.
The new communications message with the hashtag “StayAlert” has been really successful in terms of reach and engagement. It attracted nearly 128K conversations and 389.4M potential reach with its peak of 9.7K conversations at 7pm on May 10th, which is well considered to be a successful PR campaign, regarding viral on the internet. Moreover, it still took good advantage of the rule of three as previously used. It is proven that we can only hold a small amount of information in short term, or ‘active,’ memory and the rule of three has been applied for quite a long time. It’s everywhere. It makes the message more structured, hard-wired and memorable, while “longer lists make it more complex, confusing and convoluted.” (Gallo, 2012).
However, in terms of the message itself and the question about its functioning, the statistics, as well as the opinions of PR practitioners, show the contrary. A lot of comments on the new message discussed the ambiguity and vagueness of the message itself, interestingly, Scotland’s first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, described it as “vague and imprecise”.
A YouGov poll of more than 6,500 people conducted on Sunday and Monday found that just 30% of people said they felt they knew what the new slogan was asking them to do.
So why did this happen, and compared to the Government’s previous campaign, to what extent the new message “StayAlert” really managed to alert publics? Does it make the publics understand the message, follow the rules and take actions?
Unfortunately, according to a survey recently carried out, most responses seem not very positive. The public has seen the message as “meaningless”, “vague” and”ambiguous”.
Many PR practitioners expressed themselves as “aghast at the new messaging” because it was too far ambiguous. The new message told us what to do, but didn’t tell us how to do it (Milller, 2020). It is open to interpretation and confusing at the same time. The message did not convey to its expected meaning from the Government to its publics.
I also did a research to compare the sentiment of the publics about two messages, the old one “StayHome” and the new one “StayAlert” based on the hashtag used on Twitter. Unsurprisingly, the major sentiment for “StayAlert” is negative, only 29.1% said it was positive, while the ratio for the old message “StayHome” is 2.5 times higher.
Creating effective communication messages involves a two-step process: ‘getting the right message’ and ‘getting the message right’ (Egger et al., 1993). Getting the right message involves identifying what message(s) will motivate the target audience to adopt the recommended action (Henley et al., 2007). Getting the message right entails presenting the message in a way that attracts attention, is believable, relevant, able to be understood, arouses appropriate emotions and does not lead to counterargument (Donovan, 1991). In this situation, the Government failed to get the right message, which made it confusing about the question of whether people can be motivated to try to change behavior. Others argue that the country is moving to phase two of the battle, to a more flexible stage. David Golding, co- founder, Adam&Eve/DDb, said: “There is no common and universal behaviour now. So the only thing that can be achieved is a common and universal vigilance.”
On May 10th, in an attempt to clear confusion, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Number 10 Downing Street released the explanation of the message.
As of May 13th, Johnson again unveiled the actions which are necessary to combat the virus:
“The issue is that the original expression “Stay home” is almost too successful.”, said Jules Chalkley – Executive Creative Director, Ogilvy. The old message told us exactly what to do and how to do it. We can #protecttheNHS and #savelives by #stayhome. It’s not the case for the new message because the word “alert” means different for different people and risks clarity. In times of uncertainty, one of the strong influences is authority (Cialdini, 2007) and that’s what the publics need. The publics need clear message both verbally and visually, which will be far more effective than the current message.
REFERENCES
- Cialdini, R., 2007. Influence : The Psychology Of Persuasion. New York: Collins.
- Egger, G., Donovan, R.J. & Spark, R. (1993). Health and the Media: Principles and Practice for Health Promotion. McGraw-Hill, Sydney
- Gallo, C., 2020. Thomas Jefferson, Steve Jobs, And The Rule Of 3. [online] Forbes. Available at: <https://www.forbes.com/sites/carminegallo/2012/07/02/thomas-jefferson-steve-jobs-and-the-rule-of-3/> [Accessed 13 May 2020].
- Henley, N., Donovan, R. and Francas, M., n.d. Developing and Implementing Communication Messages. Handbook of Injury and Violence Prevention, pp.433-447.
- Miller, R., 2020. What Does The Government’S New Messaging Mean?. [online] All Things IC. Available at: <https://www.allthingsic.com/what-does-the-governments-new-messaging-mean/> [Accessed 13 May 2020].
- Prweek.com. 2020. PR Pros Lambaste New Government ‘Stay Alert’ Slogan As ‘Unclear’ And ‘Unhelpful’. [online] Available at: <https://www.prweek.com/article/1682781/pr-pros-lambast-new-government-stay-alert-slogan-unclear-unhelpful> [Accessed 13 May 2020].
- Yougov.co.uk. 2020. Yougov. [online] Available at: <https://yougov.co.uk/topics/health/articles-reports/2020/05/11/brits-split-changes-coronavirus-lockdown-measures> [Accessed 13 May 2020].
Photo: Tobias Moore|Unplash
