Australia’s official vaccination ad is a dud, according to marketing academic Tom van Laer.
“In advertising terms, it is a message mismatch,” says the associate professor of narratology at the University of Sydney.
“It features the deputy chief medical officer Dr Nick Coatsworth heading out of the surgery and into a café for a takeaway coffee or two.
“The ad is misusing Dr Coatsworth’s real value. Experts like Dr Coatsworth should not be positioned as influencers to motivate people with incentives.
“In the ad Dr Coatsworth is out at the local shops doing layperson activities (picking up a takeaway and enjoying the freedom that comes with a COVID-free community.”
That’s more a role for tennis player Ashley Barty or actor Hugh Jackman, not an infectious diseases physician.
“Instead, we should use Dr Coatsworth as a respected authority delivering the message that the vaccine is safe and presenting the facts why,” van Laer told AdNews.
Australia’s vaccine program hasn’t built enough momentum to match other countries. About 0.46% of the population is being vaccinated a day, less than half the EU rate.
van Laer says we need to cover a multitude of factors to get the message right. This includes considering the social context and individual incentives. Why should I get the jab?
“Research tells us that people are hesitant about vaccines for a variety of reasons,” he says.
An advertising campaign needs to offer individuals an incentive – -- a motivating, emotional story – either a fear-based campaign or a campaign of how life will be better for us and the country if (most of) us roll up our sleeves and get the jab.
“Yet if we are dealing with an audience that is sceptical but motivated, such as many older Australians who are concerned about side effects but do not oppose taking a vaccine against COVID per se, then the ad should draw on mental shortcuts to influence behaviour,” he says.
“That is, since everyday people do not usually have expertise in epidemiology or immunisation, seeing a likeable celebrity or respected authority recommend the vaccine allows them to take a shortcut in their deliberations.”
“That person will then thinks ‘it is ‘OK, I trust that person, so I will do it too’.”
van Laer says many in advertising don’t quite know how or why what they do works. They just know that it does.
“People on the outside think that advertising is practised as a science, but in large part it’s not—in fact, far from it,” he says. “Mostly it’s made up.”
“Adam Ferrier once said: ‘In most advertising agencies there is still only one god—the executive creative director—and that one god reveres just one thing: creativity’.”
“Injecting science into this thinking has been difficult. Therefore, many advertising agencies are very, very good at their craft, while simultaneously not entirely sure why it’s effective.”
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