Pandemic’s hard truths for business communicators

As a matter of life and death, the COVID pandemic has delivered some pretty tough lessons for those professional communicators who seek to change or influence human behaviour.

We watch aghast as a mix of conspiracy subscribers, those feeling aggrieved and an aggregate of anarchists take to the streets to oppose COVID lockdown, mandatory vaccinations and even just wearing masks and, by doing so, simply risk worsening the pandemic and deepening its impacts.

These people are bleeding edge examples of what makes behavioural change so difficult to achieve. Even government directives that are in the best interests of the individuals involved and the broader community struggle to change our most entrenched emotional responses and activities.

For those involved in the daily business of providing advice and education to promote behavioural change, community responses to the pandemic are instructive on what a monumental task they are facing.

Even with the might of legislation and law enforcement, the weight of mainstream media, the voluntary support of community influencers and, ultimately, the underlying threat of illness and death, the calls to action on preventative behaviour has been challenging.

From a communications perspective, the reflections and lessons from the pandemic relate to what realistic expectations we should have when faced with bringing about meaningful behavioural change.

This is not about flipping customers from one brand of lipstick or chocolate to another. It relates far bigger challenges that are faced for communications about complex financial products, issues like workplace safety or the risks of alcohol and drugs. These are akin to the hurdles faced by the pandemic communicators and generally ask people to defer or refuse pleasures and rewards now to realise better and notionally less exciting or pressing outcomes in the long term.

There have been numerous experiments that have defined the hurdles to this, but none have had the scope of the pandemic-driven, community scale experimentation that we have experienced. Here’s a few thoughts:

1. Timeframe

Dealing with a pandemic has compressed the timeframe for change. Generally and depending on the complexity of it, achieving substantive behavioural change takes anything from around eight months to years.

There would be almost no marketing communications professionals who have not experienced undue pressure to achieve a substantial shift in consumer behaviour in timeframes much shorter than this.

The example and lesson from the pandemic will support future business cases that tell organisational leadership that, unless it has the force of legislation, enforcement and massive media behind it, should not expect to see any substantive behavioural change for at last 12 months - most likely longer.

2. Emotion over data

Governments have almost universally referenced ‘health advice’ in formulating policy and public health orders. Trump, Bolsonaro and few other ‘strongmen’ type leaders have chosen to ignore it, but the rational have not.

Regularly quoting health evidence has had as much to do with political instinct for getting out of jail free if things go pear-shaped as anything else, but it has proven to be the right approach to pandemic management and risk mitigation.

But no matter what the evidence, not everyone has bought into the narrative, even on this matter of life and death. Whether people subscribe to the solutions offered has been as much about emotion as it has about scientific evidence and modelling that few comprehend or even care to investigate.

Professional communicators and marketers have known this for years, but have struggled to convince rationalist colleagues obsessed with next month’s sales figures.

Analysis of responses to the pandemic should provide ample evidence that, unless we can influence at an emotional level, rational appeal won’t move the dial.

3. Authority and trust

So if evidence won’t move the dial, from where does authority derive? There are two elements at play - trust and accountability. In a sense, they’re the flip side of the same coin, but in the political arena, there is a difference - at least in democracies.

When the pandemic first hit, national and state political leaders took to the stage. It had to be. The importance of the message had to be reflected by the status of the individual, if only as the representative of the office.

As the messengers were politicians, authority therefore derived from the individual for those inclined to be political supporters, or from the accountability for those who respect the office but perhaps not the individual holding it.

In any event, and by its nature, this authority was bound to dissolve into political partisanship as people endured the pain and disruption of an extended, two-year-plus event as the COVID pandemic turned out to be.

This was where the loyal Chief Health Officer (CHO) was to kick in, to be seen as the impartial navigator of truth and action where the politics might fail. As time wore on, messages synchronised between political leader and CHO were interpreted as the latter becoming politically compromised.

Nonetheless, the combination has seen Australia through to a re-opening, the marriage of science and politics just managing to stay together long enough to see the COVID children through school.

It is critical for communicators to understand from whence trust and authority derive. In the business world, this is often a construct of a brand’s integrity and the trust capital it has built through being true to label. Every day of every business should be spent building up that capital reserve.

4. Risk or reward?

Wow! There have been many methodolgies applied to driving behaviour. Scary videos straight from intensive care units to weird animations about elbows as the primary tool for healthier sneezings and greetings. In between, have been more touchy feely appeals to protecting elderly family and friends.

People respond to all different types of stimuli, although it is worth noting that the instructional animation type effort disappeared from our media as quickly as projectile nasal droplets in a winter westerly.

Fear and love have prevailed as the primary vehicles for driving change. What will be your emotional lever?

5. Managing expectations

This is the key to success and is not confined to the external stakeholder relations. As alluded to earlier, failing to manage internal expectations of deliverables can often be more damaging to achieving behavioural change than anything else.

This means enabling key internal stakeholders to understand the craft involved in influencing behaviours, the timeframe required and the extent of change that it is reasonable to expect.

Externally, the pre-dominant consideration is to frame what is desirable and achievable without over-estimating the capacity or willingness of customers or stakeholders to change. It means understanding that organisations generally do not have the tools to demand change and therefore to understand the levers available that can achieve the same.

We have learned a lot about ourselves and each other from the pandemic experience - much of it positive. We can be adaptable, resilient, innovative, collaborative and caring. We can also just be bloody hard to convince.

Photo courtesy jesse orrico on Unsplash