WWSTBD? Can PR and Marketing Help Save Us?

"Get your shots or I'll whack you with my shovel." Probably not the winning message.

Misinformation and mistrust have poisoned our response to COVID-19, and the dark days are not yet behind us.

Which surge are we in? The third? Fifth? I’ve lost count, but as a deadly, infectious virus again fills our hospitals—largely with unvaccinated people—I wonder how we can be more effective in getting Americans to take this scourge seriously—to do what we need to do to knock this pandemic down.

The science isn’t too mysterious. Social distance. Mask. Frequently test. Be vaxed and boosted. Don’t seek medical advice from political sites or random social media memes. Do your own research—if you have a pHd in science. Otherwise, pay attention to those who do valid research, not the proverbial 400-pound man in his basement. (For the record, I do look like Santa, but I am not 400 pounds—yes, I am writing this in my basement.)

But science is not enough. When it’s not believed, it’s not working. Omicron is highly transmissible and American are highly resistant to giving two hoots. Mandates for large employers, the military, healthcare workers and first responders may help with the vaccination rates, but pushing people who don’t believe also makes them push back harder.

The herd can’t become humanely immune if the herd won’t hear what must be heard.

Granted, we’ve seen massive failures of political leadership. This pandemic has been politicized, which is a costly tragedy. We once had a president who told us to consider injecting bleach, and we have many so-called pundits promoting quack cures and spreading mistrust of those who should be trusted. In Iowa, our governor assures us we will “do the right thing,” when it’s patently obvious too many Iowans would rather just do the right-wing thing, even when it’s wrong.

I find myself wondering, WWSTBD? What would Smokey the Bear do?

Most of use remember Smokey. He reminded us that only we can prevent forest fires. It didn’t end fires—climate change had led to some massive wildfires in recent times—but that old bear did raise awareness and changed behavior in his day.

And Smokey isn’t the only example of a PSA avatar that has done us some good. Remember the “crying Indian” from 1971? That PSA actually helped reduce littering, and fueled an environmental movement that, even if it can be controversial, has led to a cleaner country.

Neither Smokey nor the Native American who was actually an actor of Italian ancestry were 100 percent successful, and neither symbolizes a problem that was completely licked. But problems don’t work that way. Big problems aren’t so much solved as abated, and I would like more pandemic abating.

One thing that I think has been lacking in our anti-COVID efforts is an effective symbol and slogan. We can shout at each other about facts and disinformation, but we need some messaging that hits us on a more elemental level. We need a COVID equivalent of insurance Flo or the Geico gecko. We need a slogan like “only you can prevent forest fires.” (“Only you can knock down a deadly virus?”) We need messaging that is factually accurate but that is also not a dry recitation of facts—something that will play on patriotism, loyalty, doing what’s right, working together. We don’t just need to hear, we need to feel.

Rosie the Riveter needs to roll up her sleeve for a needle.

I’ve been looking at a few COVID PSAs, and they have information and aren’t always terrible, although sometimes they are also plodding and dull. The CDC has a gabagillion videos on its YouTube channel, but none has yet gone viral. Here is a CDC PSA and another attempt from a medical school, followed by an NHS Facebook ad from the UK, which I think does a better job:

 

 

We don’t have a snappy slogan. A compelling character full of pathos. A key, concise, positive message. Something that we should push with a billion marketing dollars to spread a positive, life-saving message.

Get your shot. Wear your mask. Be boosted. Get tested. Fine, but which of those would mean something on a bumper sticker? Those are the messages, but not the means to our hearts nor the memes we would share.

CDC PSA. Fine, but where's Smokey?

Again, OK. But "Proven Safe and Effective" could be a shampoo ad.

I’m not an ad writer, I don’t know what would work. But I see lots of ads for cells phones, promos for shows, snazzy productions for deodorants—my Christmas media wish would be for us to be awash in ads that have more meaning and that could have more impact.

So come on, science. Hear me, Joe Biden. Bring it on. Find the right Mad Men.  If not Smokey, Nellie the Nurse. Ashley the Elf who survived Covid? The vax fox? I know I want something even if I’m sure exactly what it is. But when I’m humming the tune of that catchy vax jingle, that may be important progress.

Humans Don’t Always Look Good in “Arirval”

Amy Adams as linguist Louise Banks in "Arrival." That's no human vehicle parked in the background. All images on this post appeared in online news stories or reviews and are credited as Paramount Pictures PR images.

In case you didn’t catch the Amy Adams movie “Arrival” when it came out five years ago, I’ll try to avoid spoilers in this essay about the film. Which seems a bit ironic when writing about this movie, which plays with and twists notions of both time and language. My wife and I noticed the DVD at a sale price, and took a chance on it, and Friday I watched it for the first time. Amy Adams, don't you know. I can watch her read the phone book, I think. She's a bit like Sarah Michelle Geller--in that her eyes to a lot of the acting, too.

What we think are memories aren’t that at all. And what did the word “weapon” actually mean in that pretty ink blot alien tongue? Having just watched the movie for the first time, I feel that I missed a key plot twist that hinges on that word, which, after all, comes close to igniting a world war.

And why did the heptapods (the aliens sure do have feet) come to Earth and give us a language that opens what sounds like a cool super power but that turns out to involve a lot of complexity in choice, fate and pain? Well, that question is partly answered when Abbott (one of the two aliens the Amy Adams character converses with, the other is named, by her future or past love interest, “Costello”) tells her that they will need human help in a few thousand years, but that again raises a whole bunch of questions.

We don’t ever know where the heptapods came from. Did they travel faster than light, or is theirs a different way of viewing reality mean a journey of thousands of years at sub light speed seems undaunting? And that foggy, misty environment that they live in—what is their reality like?

The movie is clever. It plays with the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis in an interesting way, seeming to suggest that we experience time in a conceptual way that is tied to language, which shapes how we think. That hypothesis, by the way, is useful for understanding language, but not always all that useful for understanding all of human experience. It’s the notion that the nature of our language shapes the nature of our perception. What follows is my opinion (although most of what preceded is also my opinion, a fact you probably remembered)—but sometimes I think people take that useful hypothesis too seriously. For example, I’ve seen people make a big deal out of the supposed fact (I don’t know the language, so I don’t know if it’s actually true) that Arabic has no equivalent for the word “compromise.” Or that Inuit people have a gabagillion words to say “snow.” Or that some color labels don’t exist in some languages.

Sure, those are ideas worth exploring. They shape perception. But they don’t dictate it. If I don’t have a label for “teal,” for instance, it doesn’t mean that my eyes won’t see the color (my visual organs and optic nerves are still very similar to the equivalent organs in most other not-color-blind humans), and thus I may notice the hue even if I cannot name it. I think people from a linguistic tradition that doesn’t label “compromise” probably can, and probably do, grasp the idea anyway. I may not have individual words that differentiate between wet or powdery snow, or snow in the air or on the ground, or snow that has blown—but I can still see and appreciate nuances of snow.

As a writer, I believe in the power of the word. I loved the way Amy’s character Louise quickly concocted a lie about “kangaroo” to explain a truth. As humans, our words are inexact attempts for us to capture and share our experiences, but I also think experience can be “real” when it’s not bound up in a word.

That’s a long way of saying that the time-bending nature of “Arrival” was interesting, but didn’t completely work for me. And the foreboding tone of the movie made it sometimes too heavy—Louise Banks seems disturbed and fearful in her contact with the heptapods, and I wanted a bit more wonder and whimsy. The movie was clever, but sometimes too clever (that Hannah is a palindrome seemed to be emphasized way too much—so is dud).

Will I watch “Arrival” again? Yes, I think I will, if existence and time and my life cooperate. It’s not my favorite movie but it was a worthwhile and interesting one, and I’m pretty sure I’ll see details in the next watching that I missed in the first one. I also loved the idea of aliens whose written language has nothing to do with their speech, which made me wonder if there was any meaning at all in their vocalizations, yet again one of those many unanswered questions in the film.

And I respect a movie, especially a science fiction adventure, that doesn’t feel it has to answer all questions and that defies some norms of the genre. It doesn’t rely on too many car chases or breathtaking action scenes—it builds great tension with more subtlety. It has a heroine who never smacks anyone and never fires any weapon, at least as I understand the word even if I still wonder if a heptapod would agree. It’s an alien war drama where war fails to break out out—and where it was the humans and their poor choices and inability to function without clarity that caused the real danger.

Our hero uses her mind and language to save the world. No light saber, just enlightened thought.

Seems human to me. In my life, the most important problems are caused either by mindless microbes or by other hairless apes who irk me—and right now, irksome humans who respond mindlessly to certain microbes.

Obligatory pandemic side rant: I don’t care what “omicron variant” can be rearranged to spell. Potential overlords aren’t dumb enough to leave an obvious clue like that, but silly humans are prone to misinterpret words and forget that the variant wasn’t named omicron for the sake of a sick joke or some secret code; it was just the next letter in an old alphabet. We should respect words, but we can read way too much into them, too. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis also means that we can construct reality with language, and we’re sometimes shoddy builders.

Back to this interesting movie. I kind of wish Amy could smile or laugh a bit more. She has a few seconds of “oh gee” facial expressions when she meets the aliens, and I kind of wanted a bit of emphasis on that. It seemed to me that wonder was among the reactions that would be worth exploring.

It was a thoughtful, but perhaps too heavy, movie. “Arrival,” how many stars should I give you? I was thinking three, but that seems too few. You're too interesting for that. How about four? And did you remember beforehand that was what I was going to write?