In dozens of different jobs I’ve had over the years, I’ve always hated people who constantly talk about messaging and branding. Obviously it’s very important, but a lot of times someone talking about branding is referring to adjusting a logo by six inches or changing a shade of red, and I tend to think of “branding” as more than that. I worked at a few places in ’18 and ’19 that were obsessed with “messaging,” so I wrote this article on the end of brand messaging.
That’s all to say that, in the context of the vaccine(s), I think messaging will be very important. As Wharton notes here:
“We’re going to need to understand what’s holding someone back, what sub-populations have different concerns, and try to tackle those things,” Milkman said.
See also:
“Even if we get the supply chain issues right, even if we get every corner drugstore to someday be supplying these, we have to get them into arms in order for them to change the course of the pandemic,” she said. “And the messaging is going to be key to that.”
Right now we’re framing this up as “tech” and “innovation”
Which is logical, because that’s pretty much what we do in modern times. We love us some Silicon Valley ethos.
But we’ve got a lot of other stuff going on right now too, including:
- {In USA} Trump-Biden transition
- Beliefs vs. data as a core theme of 2020
- The logistics of releasing a vaccine
- The moral questions of order of who gets it (elderly, healthcare workers, rich people, prisoners…)
- Social media and mis/disinformation
- The scale at which false/negative information can spread
- The general climate of discussion around vaccines anyway (Jenny McCarthy et al, autism debates)
All those bullets, with the possible exception of No. 3 (the logistics one), are questions of messaging, information, and belief. They are not questions of tech and innovation. Belief is much stronger than tech and innovation; in a weird way, tech has emboldened staunchness of belief, and in turn that’s made tech more powerful and the people behind platforms richer. It’s a nice little dance.
What do we need to be considering here?
We need to consider how people get their information — since Facebook had 1.2 billion daily users in October, let’s start there — and then we need to consider who they trust to present it. For some people, probably tens of millions, that’s a guy like Trump or another autocrat, and they’re never going to toe (tow?) the line, because it’s important to their personal brand to not do that. So that’s probably out. Now, short of getting Beyonce to do an Instagram Live where she gets a shot in her arm, I’m not entirely sure what the play is here … although in general, liberals tend to resonate off emotional arguments (“This will save society and return normalcy!”) and conservatives tend to resonate off personal arguments and appeals to broader accountability (“This will allow us to get blowing and going again on our businesses and stop government from meddling”), and maybe targeting the message (A/B tests, social media ads) to different groups differently would be wise herein.
If we hit a situation where 35-50% of people just won’t touch any vaccines, I don’t know if we’re better off than we were, even if the innovation and delivery model is the greatest thing we’ve ever seen.
So this is a true test for messaging and branding folks. It’s not about moving a logo or changing a color to be a deeper blue. This is about lives and context for daily society. Can we rise to that moment, or do we want to worry about the font for a bit?
Unrelated/very much related: look at some of these stats on evictions and death.
