Prime Minister Scott Morrison reveals the latest stage of the coronavirus ad campaign
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has revealed the next phase of the Australian Government’s $30m coronavirus education campaign.
The latest ads take a harder line on the topics of social distancing, self isolation, gathering sizes and visits to aged-care facilities, than the earlier rendition of the campaign which focused on the importance of maintaining good hygiene and steps to take after travelling overseas.
The creative execution of the ads has also changed, replacing the pastel-toned animation of previous assets for a plainer, black, green and white execution.
In an Instagram post, the Prime Minister announced that the latest edition of the campaign carries an “important message about keeping a healthy distance from other people” with new ads appearing across out of home, TV, radio, digital and newspapers.
The campaign launched just over a week ago, with four TVCs, three print ads and four radio spots, promoting the recent traveller advice, hygiene conventions and the official government information platform.
Last Friday saw the launch of three more TVCs, in the original creative style. The ads address the policy changes in visiting aged-care facilities, the ban on non-essential outdoor gatherings of over 100 people and social distancing.
The ad addressing social gatherings states that “workplaces, schools, shops, universities, public transport and airports aren’t currently affected”, however since its launch the Government has announced the shutdown of indoor venues including pubs, sporting, entertainment and religious venues, with cafes and restaurants allowed to offer takeaway.
Mumbrella has reached out to the Department of Health to determine whether the ad will continue to run.
The initial creative was executed by Brisbane-based Carbon Creative. Mumbrella has also asked the Department of Health whether it continues to work with the agency on the campaign.
The two other spots that launched last Friday can be seen here:
Its a really good initiative and congrats on the creative. Some constructive feedback is that there are very few people in the city looking at the billboards – as per your picture. Should our money be spent on digital advertising, would this be a more effective channel right now?
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can’t help thinking these ads need to be way more aggressive.
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This sort of sober, fact-based communication is just what we need to see from our government right now.
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The original creative was beige beyond belief, and took much too long to make it to market. I bet the agency made a bucket.
The newer ones are better, and the use of simple dataviz is smart, given that’s become the universal language of the crisis.
Agreed that the spend should be where people are right now, which is…not outdoors!
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Is there anyone left at bus shelters to see these ads?
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I’d normally agree re: OOH vs digital however, there’s a surprisingly large amount of people still out and about in the cities.
OOH in this case is actually perfectly targeting people who need to see this message, much more so than the already informed self-isolating population.
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I work with people today (in an office) who are ignorant to the seriousness of this pandemic and still do not take distancing seriously despite all the education and sanitiser around the place. The people who need to see this are the ones who are not yet concerned or think they’ll be ok, so they will still take no notice anyway until people they know die. The people with a positive result today probably contracted the virus two weeks ago so we are responding to stats from two weeks ago. We will eventually have to totally shut down anyway like other countries. Morrison is just going to do it slowly which is just going to be harder on business in the end and will result in many more deaths.
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