Are Government U-turns a viable communications strategy?
Photo by Igor Tichonow on Unsplash
So the Covid-19 pandemic has seen an unprecedented level of Government U-turns. Today’s one on the back of Savid Javid, the new business oh sorry I mean health secretary testing positive for Covid-19.
PM Boris Johnson and chancellor Rishi Sunak were going to take part in a new ‘daily testing trial'‘ which meant that they didn’t have to self-isolate. On the back of a week with a record number of people across the UK being pinged to self-isolate and ‘freedom day’ still happening tomorrow despite a scary level of new infections each day, this trial news was unsurprisingly met with pure anger from the general public.
And the announcement made first thing this morning was reversed within record time (an hour or two) as the level of backlash soon came to light. This government has a track record in U-turns as this Sky News piece today outlines.
Titbits of news and unnamed spokespeople making the headlines in the weekend press to test the public sentiment. If it’s not going well and getting a bad reaction - the Government decides to retweet and issue a new announcement saying precisely the opposite.
It’s happened for:
England’s A-level student grades were downgraded by an algorithm which favoured those from richer areas rather than their final assessments being made by the teachers who actually knew the students. Something that could have easily been avoided by acknowledging the problem in good time.
The PM refusing to condone England fans who booed players who took the knee before an England match. Another major U-turn was magnified just last week when England players were racially abused after the Euro’s.
Free school meals and not wishing to feed poor children over the Summer break.
Nudge then U-Turn
Well, all of this approach is what I’ve termed ‘nudge style’ communications when rather than make an overt decision or announcement. You drip feed a story via an unnamed spokesperson or leak a document to test public sentiment. Then you look at the data / level of support / outcry / outrage and then decide how you the Government will then react and give your open response / announcement.
I have a feeling that nudge communications is tied to nudge theory which is used by many start-ups whereby you get a prototype of the ground quickly so you can test it on the market. If it works you build it out fully if it doesn't you drop it.
If this model sounds painfully familiar, we all should be quite used to it by now - it’s what the UK Government has been doing for absolutely ages and has resulted in many many U-turns. Let's not kid ourselves, this approach does work, look at Brexit and the last round of elections. Loads of leaks, loads of off the record briefings from unnamed sources in mainstream media before official announcements are made. This approach may be the ‘new communications norm’ but to me as a comms professional - something about this approach really doesn’t sit well and here’s why:
It erodes public confidence
At times of crisis such as a pandemic, the general public want leadership and Government who leads from the front. We need to have confidence in the information that we’re receiving from whichever channel we choose to receive it from (social media, radio, tv, newspapers etc). At times of crisis we need to have trust and belief that things will get better.
In the past, one of the main news stations (BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Radio 4 or Sky) would have been the go to communications vehicle for the Government but fallout from increasingly hostile campaigns surrounding Brexit and recent elections have built a sizeable disconnect between Government and these news channels. In many respects a lot of this boils down to who controls the message or the narrative that’s being conveyed. This ‘battle’ led to a strategy for senior Government officials to bypass these channels and prefer to go onto ‘softer’ broadcasters (This Morning etc) who would give them an easier ride and allow them to broadcast their messages one-way and largely unchallenged.
But with this communications approach bypassing traditionally news channels in favour of drip feeding ideas via unnamed spokespeople - makes things so much more difficult. Is this policy? Is this law? Who said it? What’s fact? What’s fiction? Nudge tactics have made it far hard to decipher what the heck is going on.
It builds mistrust in government and those in positions of authority
When it comes to the Government, the nudge communications approach is creating public apathy towards those in positions of authority. Not being able to decipher the truth or get a straight answer leads to apathy or at least it has with me and many of the people I know. At the start of the pandemic I wanted a leader who stepped up did daily briefings and led from the front with open clear communications.
What we got fell far short of that. Leaks left, right and centre, rumours and pure indecision or plain outright lies. Where was the Prime Minister? What was really going on? Who should I trust? Who should I believe? What should I really do for me and for my family? Whose parents own an estate that’s effectively an enclave with two outhouses that can house multiple households?! It was hard to know who to trust.
It builds mistrust in the media
The insatiable demand for 24 hours news and the onset of instantaneous news / whispers via social media has changed the news landscape forever. News spreads like wildfire. And when things are shared at rapid pace it’s easy to lose the original sentiment of the poster or even who the original source really was. It’s easy to take things as fact when they are indeed fiction.
Plus, the use of unnamed spokespeople has not helped the public to trust the media - who are these people,? How connected are they to the upper echelons of Government? I’m watching a journalist for an established broadcaster say something from a spokesperson - therefore it gives what’s being said a level of authority.
But what happens when the public doesn’t like what’s being said or whatever has been announced hasn’t had a good level of sentiment from the public. Well that has been when Government policy has then been amended - we never said that - what spokesperson? And a hastily cobbled new approach - message and tactic would then be announced by the Government and thus eroding credibility for the media outlet who shared the story initially.
It makes people switch off
We’re now in a place where many people now switch off from the news and Government communications. The nudge communications approach has not helped this. How many people do you know who no longer pay attention to or follow the news? It’s too depressing. I don’t trust anyone. I just can’t take the constant lies or inability to answer a question. How many of these things have crossed your mind? It’s hard to keep paying attention when you feel like you’re constantly having to navigate through a load of treacle to find the actual truth. Who has the time or inclination to find the truth?
When the Covid 19 pandemic started out I did tune into the daily press briefings but as they became more farcical with question dodging - being led less by science and as the media were more constrained and controlled via online socially distanced questioning - I became disillusioned. I have to admit I stopped tuning in. I now get my news when I can deal with the ambiguity and from people and sources that I trust.
Nudge Comms example 1 - It’s all about the NHS
Priority is NHS - oh public sentiment would have been strong for this one - let’s stick to it that's our key message. - you can imagine the Government team thinking this. Let's put all our energy and resources into this..…..forget about care homes that's not ranking as highly they can wait. Let's discharge people from hospital don't worry about testing, NHS is the priority. PPE we don't have enough so priority is the NHS care homes can fend for themselves. And so on and so one.
And so the ticking time bomb of unshielded care homes began. Chasing scant resources, doing what they could but not being a priority for the Government to support. The discourse started coming to light on social media, families telling their stories, rates of infection and sadly deaths being really high but in some respects that was to be expected. But these deaths were not being recorded in any official pandemic statistics so the Government didn’t really have to care. The irony is that the Department of Health’s full name is actually The Department of Health and Social Care. But the social care element at the beginning of this pandemic was largely forgotten.
Once these stories actually started to be covered in mainstream media outlets the tide of public sentiment started to turn. I remember a day, when I still watched the news and the CEO of a Northern care home was begging for help. She’d lost 9 residents to Covid 19 and was visibly shaken and worried about the fate of her remaining residents and the safety and wellbeing of her staff. She was doing all she could but she was also clearly broken. The care home system was on its feet and now it was on Sky News, BBC News and even made the main papers. So the public sentiment pendulum had swung back the other way. The publics’ priority wasn’t now just the NHS, the public were outraged by what was happening in care homes.
Swiftly after that happened care homes figures started to be included more in official stats, the next government briefing was on care homes and new support measures were being introduced to support them. Thankfully - we do care about the vulnerable and elderly in our society.
In conclusion
Nudge communications followed by swift U-turns as a communications approach to me really doesn’t work. Done over a prolonged period - people will just switch off and stop listening. This apathy will also mean that people don’t do the things that we need to do to get out this pandemic. In some ways, such as Brexit it has worked but the real cost is - the damage to society’s confidence in Government and the media. To me, it's a shady way to manage important communications and conjures up scenes of shady people in corners whispering policies and announcements - to gauge public sentiment before going in the whole hog. Testing the waters is one thing but to keep doing so in such a way that dents public confidence is deplorable in my eyes.
