Australian government’s alarmist Covid ad does more harm than good

The new Covid vaccination ad campaign is selling a message of doom to a nation desperately craving hope, writes Louise Roberts.

If the time is now to Arm Yourself, to borrow the theme of the government’s latest farcical and obscenely expensive ad ­campaign, why don’t we arm ourselves with the truth?

We don’t need an actor sprayed with fake sweat, a gasping star of the new TV commercial targeted at locked down Sydney, to tell us to get vaccinated.

Or a variety of upper arms with plasters across the spot where a syringe punctured the skin, the images arranged in a colourful grid nationally across our screens.

The Covid-19 ad being aired in Sydney during the Delta strain outbreak.

A voiceover in the ad says: “Now is the time to arm yourself, your friends, your family, your workmates, your community, someone you love.”

As far as ad campaigns go, they are both abysmal because they have no hope of piercing our national psyche or demonstrating our experience of living with a virus under the control of politicians and health bureaucrats hell bent on eradicating it.

What we need is hope – the incentive of positive, normal life where dobbing isn’t our fashionable new hobby.

The brilliance of France’s national vaccine messaging, from shuttered shops opening for business to lights flickering on in once abandoned halls of learning, is that it stimulates your desire for freedom.

Life as we know it and want it is tantalisingly within reach, like a creme brulee ready to crack open, if you simply do the right thing and get vaccinated.

Illustration: Terry Pontikos

And let’s not forget the sex, so very on brand for the French who factor in a couple passionately kissing in the back seat of a car to truly ram home the message, as it were.

Come to think of it, we have missed a trick by not including sex in any of our campaigns to date, especially given our reputation in the northern hemisphere of not being duds in the bedroom department.

That may slide of course, given no one will be travelling overseas there any time soon. Fortress Australia is an absolute passion killer.

Meanwhile our government seeks to encourage us to roll up our sleeves and get the jab by threatening death.

None of these ads illuminate what Covid does but they sure as hell are using up a sizeable chunk of the government’s $40 million campaign budget.

“Covid can affect anyone. Stay home. Get tested. Book your vaccination” scrolls across the screen as the actor looks at us maniacally.

Yet if I had a family member in ICU and stricken with Covid, I would get the cameras in (Covid protocols allowing, of course).

If it’s the shock value you want, then we need to see the truth of what Covid does.

Surely the message for Sydneysiders is not just you can die from this, but you can go home from that supermarket visit to buy the essential chocolate bickies and infect your entire family, including your kids, your parents and grandparents.

We don’t need to fabricate shock value because it’s right there in front of us. Multi-generational families in southwest Sydney are testing positive in outbreaks reminiscent of the Christmas lockdown on the northern beaches.

It’s a pandemic splitting and infecting families. Gladys Berejiklian reinforces that point daily so surely that is our best “talent” for an arresting and effective ad campaign.

We’ve got every age bracket represented in ICU right now and they’re all a breath away from ventilation. Show Australia what it really looks like.

Public warning campaigns are invariably compared to the HIV-AIDS bowling alley ad campaign of 1987 but at least that Grim Reaper campaign had a story. You could follow the trail.

One person slept with another person. And then there was the multiplication of everybody else they slept with. Before you knew it, they had slept with three thousand people. But at least we understood the messaging.

We don’t know what our life strategy is going to look like in Australia because we’ve been driving home an eradication policy for the better part of 18 months.

The government hasn’t communicated based on people’s understanding of vaccines. If I’m vaccinated, I’m not going to get it. You still hear and read this.

And that’s not what this vaccine does. It gives you a much greater chance of avoiding hospital, ICU and ventilation.

The weekend creative of the young woman – too young to be vaccinated, mind you – was filmed last year. Our vaccination program began in February with an ad, featuring Dr Nick Coatsworth, a respiratory and infectious diseases specialist and now former deputy chief health officer, advising on the response.

The French are telling us “Yes, the vaccine can have desirable effects” and “With each vaccination, life starts again.” These are great lines.

Here, we are becoming more insular than ever.

We can drive this message home by telling human stories, the type which we desperately need if we are to crush the suspicion we now have towards each other.

There’s so much truth out there.

Originally published as Australian government’s alarmist Covid ad does more harm than good