The great marketing failure of 2021- relative to its inexhaustible resources, the government is doing close to nothing to convince people to get vaccinated and has abandoned the battlefield to conspiracy theorists.
Anyone who follows the weekly advertising index or invests a little and orders a periodic monitoring report of advertisements will find that the place of one advertiser is always absent from the top of the table: the government.
Furthermore, it should have been there throughout last year, certainly if we all understand that there are no real means of coping with the pandemic other than herd immunity. Moreover, it is precisely the advertiser with the greatest means in the economy who should have had a huge budget to throw at the most critical product of the past two years, is not there. This colossal failure is owned by the side supposed to be the strongest and equipped with all the means and knowledge in a war that slowly seems to be being won by the trolling forces.
When is an advertisement effective? What is a memorable and beloved advertisement? Contrary to what it may seem, this is not advertising people's amazing talent and creativity. The path toward an ad that does not leave one's mind passes through money, money, and more money. A campaign on which they have poured enormous amounts and will constantly be present in our public space – will eventually be the one that will work.
There will be those who will say, Yes, but we live in crazy times, so what do you want? Creating a campaign that will motivate nearly 100% of the public to get vaccinated is not easy to do. There is so much fake news; there are so many delusional people out there, so do not give up. What can we do when the voice of reason is in retreat throughout the entire world?
The answer is: Fight, go to battle on all fronts, with all of the heaviest cannons that only a country can have, and the other side does not. If Twitter is overloaded with conspiracy theories, Twitter should be bombed with messages in response. If Tiktok is poisoning children, Tiktok should be a front where the government is firing away its messages. Thus, it should be on Facebook, newspapers, billboards, television (a hundred times more than the 'one minute before the news' clips that are aired today), and endless other activities. Moreover, if people are going to the restroom, an ad should be in their faces. If people are scrambling up some eggs in the kitchen, the government must stamp the message on the eggshells. We need to splash this singular message on a banner across every government website, print it on municipal tax invoices, electricity bills, and notices from the tax authorities. Marketing content, merchandise, EVERYTHING – nothing less than a stunning display of power. The "other side" of the story is irrelevant here. What is relevant is how much money the government is willing to spend so that 24/7 they will put out the message "get vaccinated, get vaccinated now." They are not putting out the word. The message is not being heard around the clock.
So, what do we have instead? We have 40 percent uninoculated, parents who refuse to vaccinate their children, idiots who decided to skip the booster shot, and all kinds of images that evaporated from the awareness radar but are reincarnated as conspiracy heroes. In practice, there is a never-ending trench war in social media. Fortunately for the government, numerous volunteers have 'reported for duty and are doing nothing less than sacred work. Doctors, researchers, just good plain folks in the middle of the road, who post the God's honest truth opposite the fake, or who provide facts against one of the most disgusting weapons in the arsenal of the perpetrators of chaos: "I'm just asking a question." However, when one remembers that those who are perpetrating the chaos are not just citizens, who might be seen as innocent children taken prisoner, rather as engaging in psychological warfare on behalf of hostile forces (who aim to weaken the West by undermining trust in its institutions and values) – you come to understand just how abandoned the battlefield has become. So our beloved country, it is not enough that we are withering away in freeway gridlocks; you have also been "awarded" the prize for the year's greatest marketing failure. You should be ashamed of yourself.