SAINTS PRESERVE US

Mean Mr. Covid

When it all gets too much, you turn the TV set on and light a cigarette, and a public service announcement comes creeping on, and you see a lung corroded or a fatal heart attack… Lou Reed, Turn to Me

With positive covid-19 numbers outnumbering flakes of falling snow, healthcare infrastructure overwhelmed and field hospitals being prepped, the Government of Alberta has pivoted its safety message. Normally I applaud our United Conservative Party (UCP) overlords with very slow, solo clapping. The regime has been an embarrassing disaster since our last election day. The hand I’m giving it this holiday season is somewhat enthusiastic, genuine. Bittersweet. Twenty-six infected Albertans died yesterday.  

Public service announcements (PSAs) are tricky dockets for ad agencies. The information, always valuable, is dry and usually critical: a catchy slogan could mean the difference between life and death. The default creative reflex is usually a somber tut-tut or tsk-tsk. Meanwhile, people resent being told what to do even if it’s for their own good and that of society at large.

Marketing campaign metrics are simple measures, units sold. An advertising campaign designed to influence isn’t so easy to quantify. It takes time to change behaviour. I’ve been involved with a few PSA campaigns. I’ve read about studies of PSA campaigns (but not the actual studies). The gist is that humour is frequently more persuasive than a lecture. Do not shame your target audience; do not wag your finger. However, people resent being laughed at and so it’s very effective to embarrass them, jeer and make fun of them. Humour takes many forms.

An Edmonton ad agency has anthropomorphised the corona virus. Alberta’s ‘Covid’ character has made his video debut. He reminds me of a classic baseball mascot, a hydrocephalic head atop a standard human body. Mr. Covid’s head mirrors the shape of the virus which also suggests (fatally and appropriately) a prickly undersea mine. His eyes are the Grinch’s. His red-lipped, rictus smile reveals the Joker’s yellow teeth. He plays an uninvited visitor in a Christmas dinner spot, that oddball uncle we can all relate to, ugly Santa sweater and all, who handles each and every common serving utensil whilst laughing and breathing over an array of uncovered dishes of food.

The government’s initial barrage of public safety messaging was fairly benign. Maroon type on a sky blue field with the province’s word mark lower right. The colour scheme reminded me of Aston Villa’s home football kit, a combination I’ve always found attractive. The various executions were highwire health, the people’s and the economy’s balanced on a tightrope which has since morphed into a razor’s edge. While it’s not safe to say, but suffice to say, the libertarian mixed messaging of safety suggestions and advice with caveats understandably failed to resonate with most Albertans.

Consequently, the current Mr. Covid campaign comes with some baggage, a curious duality. There is the tacit acknowledgment that the government’s first response to the crisis was casual, dismissive, flawed. Inept and disastrous. More compelling is the tone of the creative which whiffs of petulant defensiveness, an official UCP tantrum: “FOR FUCK’S SAKE! WHAT DIDN’T YOU GET? DO WE HAVE TO DRAW YOU A FUCKING PICTURE!?”

Because we live in a time of complaint and outrage, there’s been some social media push-back regarding the cartoonish depiction of the virus. Apparently Mr. Covid is in some way disrespectful to the covid-19 dead, that the campaign somehow pokes fun at their memory. It does not. It has instead bulldozed the ill-informed and indifferent clutter of compliancy. The dead cannot speak. But I suspect if they could, their chorus would not be a choir of anger so much as rueful remonstration: “If you’d just kept your eye on the spiky ball from the start, if you’d just been a little quicker off the mark, if you’d only run a campaign like Mr. Covid sooner than later.”             

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of holiday cheer since 2013. Sign up for e-mail alerts from the Crooked 9, use that thingy on the right. The second wave is still cresting and winter is coming; you’ll need a distraction.