Battling covid with kindness

What had just happened?

We’ve just passed the one-year anniversary of being locked down or restricted in some way in the UK. Just over a year ago the WHO declared a global pandemic due to the outbreak of novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 – Covid-19, had arrived and was about to wreak havoc.

We want to tell the story of a group of North Eastern councils that joined forces to face Covid head-on, and how we played a part in helping them successfully communicate with a region that was facing a grave prognosis.

This paper joins events in the autumn of 2020. Like the rest of the world, the UK was being ravaged by Covid-19. Over October, the 7-day average1 of new cases rose from 6,259 to 22,521, and the rolling average for daily deaths rose from 42 to 259 over the same period.

It's grim up North

Around this time, the Covid problem felt particularly northern. We were getting hit harder by the virus – cases per 100,000 hovered around the 100 mark, and in mid-September, swathes of the north were placed in enhanced restrictions by central government, including the North East. The region entered Tier 2 restrictions in the middle of October, followed by Tier 3 in early December.

Who are The LA7?

The North East we’re talking about is known locally as the LA7. Seven councils from Northumberland in the north to County Durham in the south joined forces in a united front to fight Covid.

The challenge

We’ve heard it said ‘it’s only advertising, no one’s dying’. Only this time they were.

In our pitch, we described the campaign as the most important the region has seen in recent times. And we really meant it. We were going to be responsible for helping local powers save local lives. The prospect of failure was unbearable.

The short and short of it

For once we weren’t extolling the good sense of long and short-term activity. We weren’t planning years down the road – we hope this will be over by then. We knew we had to start affecting change immediately by winning the region’s trust and inspiring them to change their behaviours. Wasted time meant potentially more risk to our citizens. If ever a short term impact was needed, it was now. We balanced the need for insight with getting the campaign into the wild to do its good work through lightning-fast quant (Commissioned independent research with a representative regional sample n=500 conducted in October 2020)  and qual (25 in-depth interviews with residents) – we listened intently as locals told us their Covid stories.

Hearing the region.

So many messages – it’s tiring and confusing. People’s capability, opportunity and motivation had waned since Lockdown 1.0. Since March we had been subjected to a series of campaigns telling us what we could and couldn’t do. Instead of being motivational, updates on how to get to a better future had increased people’s sense of anxiety and confusion.

Pandemic fatigue and erosion of well-being

People told us they were confused, tired and desperately missing their friends and families. Mental health and emotional well-being were under threat and impacting people’s ability and motivation to adhere to desired behaviours.

Sacrifices, injustice and lack of legitimacy

We heard story after story about the sacrifices people were making. We felt an undercurrent of injustice bubbling away.

People were questioning the legitimacy of the rules which had started to make less sense.

Behavioural diagnosis -  All of this manifested in two behavioural concerns – social distancing and household mixing. People were lapsing either unconsciously or consciously.

Unconscious lapses -  ‘Staying alert’ all of the time takes its toll on our resource-heavy System 2. How much longer could we withstand the constant cognitive load? People were simply forgetting. Transitioning between different domains with their own contextual cues for behaviours was effortful e.g. from home to work, from ‘always-on alertness’ at work to a relaxed mind-state during a break or picking up children from school.

We would target these domains and transitions to nudge people in the right place at the right time.

Conscious lapses - People also planned ‘little lapses’, creating their own emotional loopholes to justify these behaviours, whether based on their own concerns about legitimacy, or for mental health, relationship or social gains. People were forming their own interpretation of the rules based on their own assessment of personal risk vs reward. And with Christmas on the horizon people told us of their preplanned festive lapses – they were desperate to see loved ones.

In summary - We had found a region who were worn down physically, emotionally and cognitively. People were making their own individualistic reinterpretation of the rules. They were creating emotional loopholes to justify their own rule-bending or they were just forgetting. But they were also feeling mostly compliant and making sacrifices that had a detrimental impact on them and their relationships. Being constantly told what they couldn’t do felt like their efforts were unappreciated. Adding more instruction would just feel like haranguing.

Setting the strategy

Finding the heart of the matter - Despite knowing ‘what’ to do, parts of the region were either unable or unwilling to comply all of the time. In the determination to tell people what to do, the why had been lost along the way. Our mission was to rediscover the why and use it as the framework for our campaign. We knew we needed to change the Covid comms narrative.

From: Top-down, authoritarian, rule-giving

To:  A campaign to the region from its own people that recognised their efforts and encouraged them to keep going for themselves and each other.

We had to:

• Focus on empathy and appreciate people’s sacrifices.

• Offer a prospect of reward or incentive – getting our futures back.

• Demonstrate tangible, small steps to recovery.

• Inspire a sense of togetherness by offering a shared goal.

• Adopt a positive tone of voice, avoiding hectoring or authoritarianism.

We framed this as: 

Let’s keep taking those small steps together to get the future we all want.

We created a campaign that features 10 locals from the region. Instead of telling the audience what they can or can’t do, each of them says ‘Thank you’ to the people for everything they are doing to help stop the spread of Covid. Each execution references one of the behaviours we wanted to nudge and tells a story of why that will make a difference to our protagonists.

As the campaign worked hard on our rediscovered why, we wanted to make sure we were reinforcing this with the what and how and built the BeatCovidNE.co.uk hub to host the latest restrictions, behavioural tips and stories from our campaign storytellers.

Casting - We wanted to make each of our protagonists instantly relatable and to represent frontline workers who were contributing to the North East’s Covid response alongside everyday folk who were also doing their bit. – everyone has a part to play. They all have their story, whether that be schoolgirl Emily, shielding due to medical conditions; retired Grandmother Brenda; Carol, the NHS frontline worker who wants to keep serving the region, or Jas the bus driver, keeping frontline workers moving. They all have their own personal reason for wanting the region to stick to the guidance. This was our route to quickly establishing emotional connections, putting a friendly face to Covid comms as a foil to short, sharp, CAPS ON government messaging.

Finding our voice -  Using real people allowed us to keep our tone of voice local and relatable. There wasn’t any hectoring from figures of authority and the ‘Thank you’ message kept this soft and motivating. We wanted our voice to stand out as different to central government and NHS messaging rather than add to the noise. We were lucky – the North Eastern accent is generally known for being trustworthy and it’s a region that likes to think of itself as friendly and no-nonsense (okay, we might be a bit biased). We knew that our real local voices would be key to driving relevance and resonance in the area.

Targeting behaviour

The campaign wasn’t just about creating a collective voice to face into Covid, we had to change behaviour to save lives. We were targeting the two behaviours that had slipped – social distancing and household mixing. Our messaging construct always included a ‘Thank you’ and framed behavioural cues in the context of the benefits to the protagonists (and by proxy, to us all).

Making things even more personal

This was a campaign for and from people of the region. Research said ‘the NE region’ wasn’t as resonant or motivating as people’s immediate locality, so we used targeted media that referenced people’s specific areas. 

We used media placement to talk to key audiences and key domains or behavioural contexts. Geo-targeted digital reached parents around schools and people who had been in a care home.

Targeting workers/commuters by using radio and the region’s transport network – buses and the Tyne & Wear Metro system with messaging specific to travel.

As Christmas approached, the campaign also featured heavily around the region’s shopping centres.

We wanted to ensure that traditionally harder to reach audiences could see the campaign, so we deployed ad vans with locally specific messaging.

Digital hub

To support the region with the up-to-date and locally relevant information they needed, we designed and developed BeatCovidNE.co.uk, an online platform as the source of helpful guidance that would help individuals who were struggling to keep up with changes in guidance stay informed and adopt the right behaviours when it mattered most.​

Extending the campaign

Each of our protagonists published weekly Covid Diaries on our BeatCovidNE online hub and local media. The region got to know the trials and tribulations of each diarist as they responded to the changing landscape and challenges such as contracting and recovering from Covid, going back into shielding, or dealing with homeschooling. Bringing personal and in-depth stories into the region’s homes further strengthened the communal bonds created by the campaign.

The results

We helped bring the region together behind the campaign. 

There was a groundswell of support – 84% of the region supported the LA7 running the campaign.

And key take-outs were around fostering a strong sense of community, following rules to help people and services in the local area, and an understanding that there is still work to be done to beat Covid.

We empowered people with local information: 78%  agreed that information was relevant to people in their local area (67% among people who hadn’t seen the work and up from 55% in December).

We changed people’s minds

The number of doubters nearly halved from December to February and doubt was significantly lower if people had seen the campaign.

We changed behaviour

Self reported compliance was higher among those who had seen the campaign.

The campaign actually had to change behaviour to help save lives:

The campaign was clear and easy to understand and motivated the region:

• Over the campaign period the per 100,000 case rate in the region tracked at, or below, the UK average, and the Christmas peak, fell at a faster rate in the region vs the UK average.
• Nearly half of those who saw the campaign took at least one desired action, most commonly related to their own social distancing behaviour.

• 94% took a clear message from the campaign.
• 92% of people who saw the campaign agreed they had the information they needed to keep themselves and others safe vs 83% of people who hadn’t seen the campaign.

• 90% of the region who saw the campaign agreed that they need to persevere to get through the crisis.
• 92% of people who saw the campaign agreed that they had the information they need to keep themselves and others safe vs only 83% of people who hadn’t seen the campaign.

• 90% of the region who had seen the campaign agreed that they need to persevere to get through the crisis.

Ultimately, our work changed the region’s behaviour, kept people safe and helped save lives.