For some reason, India had more high-decibel mask-wearing campaigns than get-vaccinated campaigns.
Last year, we were inundated with creative mask-wearing and social distancing campaigns by both the Government and brands, but the get-vaccinated campaigns seem less vocal or visible, and it is mostly the State Governments that are advertising these messages usually with the mugshots of the Chief Minister and Prime Minister without any specific creatively conceived nudges to make people consider getting vaccinated. The idea seems to be simply, ‘If it is made available free of cost, people would come’.
I had written about removing friction from India’s vaccination campaign and ‘nudges‘ to get vaccinated earlier.
Possibly owing to the flip-flop by the Government in making vaccines available on time, and the eventual prodding by the Supreme Court that led the Government on the right path finally, brands didn’t seem to want to participate visibly in the get-vaccinated messages. Most of such messages seemed small for a country of India’s size.
Compare that with many other countries where there were high-decibel campaigns for the get-vaccinated messaging right from the Government to multiple brands pitching in.
I have been tracking the get-vaccinated campaigns from multiple countries but the ones that really caught my attention from a creativity perspective are from France. It probably makes sense that it is France because it is one of the most vaccine-skeptical countries in the world!
France’s health ministry (Ministry of Social Affairs and Health) had a fantastic campaign in June, made by MullenLowe France.
The film’s creative device is to connect 2 different actions directly – the act of the vaccine being pumped into a person and the act of assorted things opening up. It’s a lovely device, to alternate a vaccine jab with what it eventually, collectively would entail, to communicate, ‘if you all get this done, we can all get that done!’.
The framing in this promo film was showcasing what will happen if more people get vaccinated, but from an economy opening up perspective.
The very next month, the Regional Health Agency (ARS) of PACA region (Provence-Alpes-Côte-d’Azur) worked with a French agency called Zimages and came up with another get-vaccinated campaign that focused on the outcome of getting vaccinated too but with a highly creative and very-French twist.
Instead of framing the outcome as ‘good for the economy’, they framed it as ‘desirable’! That is, vaccines produce ‘desirable effects/outcome’!
The most famous poster in the series was a couple kissing passionately – a very French ‘desirable outcome’ of vaccines 🙂 Understandably, this framing became very popular online even in other European countries.
Showing shops, theaters, schools being open as a result of mass vaccinations is one thing. But making the results of vaccination personal, as this series did, was a smart framing that I don’t think has been used in other countries’ get-vaccinated campaigns. From what will happen to all of us to what will happen to you!
But, despite all this creativity, in severe irony, what really helped France ramp up vaccinations significantly was beyond any campaign or advertising! It was a Government order on July 12th that said that only those who were fully vaccinated or had a negative test result, would be allowed into cinemas, sports stadiums, restaurants, bars, shopping centers, and nightclubs, or on trains and ?ights. Even if this diktat wasn’t strictly enforced, it paved way for a massive vaccination spree! This, despite allegations that this was dictatorial, according to The Economist, “In the hours following Mr. Macron’s announcement, over 1 million people booked vaccination appointments. In the four weeks that followed, when the French are usually lying on the beach, nearly 10 million extra people got a ?rst jab. Even the controversy proved shortlived. By the end of August, 77% of the French told a poll they approved of the pass for travel, and 64% did for access to restaurants and bars. Only 34% supported the antipass demos.“
Was there relatively less anti-vaccine sentiment in India? Is that why the Indian Government did not rope in celebrities or agencies to frame creative messages towards the get-vaccinated campaign? Or was it because of the extraordinary dilly-dally over vaccine availability that eased only much later after the Supreme Court came down heavily on the Government to get its act together?