The Community of Madrid presented on November 16 an awareness campaign for the coronavirus, with messages especially addressed to young people such as the following: "If you go to party, the next season may be the funeral home" and "That round of shots knocks down your grandfather".
Some of the slogans of this campaign, which as a whole has cost more than three million euros, have been widely criticized and parodied on social networks, questioning the use of tremendous messages that hold young people responsible.
Today we have all been a bit freaking out when leaving the subway for the posters that have been put up in Ciu.
I don't know if the great idea came from @metro_madrid or @ComunidadMadrid.
The intention of this at the entrance of the uni is to make us feel guilty and you have only pissed people off pic.twitter.com/oZa9xxXgDb
- ELE✨ (@Ele_lobo) November 17, 2020
The authorities of other regions have also launched campaigns of this type, although with different approaches.
Asturias, for example, opted for a more positive motto: "The virus doesn't think, you do. Don't let it win us."
A week ago, a campaign by the Government of Germany that used humor as an awareness mechanism had a lot of repercussion in networks, demanding that the sofa become a trench.
And the Government of Spain, for its part, requested the collaboration of
influencers
to amplify their messages and launched an account on TikTok, a social network used primarily by young people, in September.
These campaigns have proliferated especially since the summer, when the average age of people infected with the coronavirus fell dramatically.
And underlying all of them is the dilemma of what is the most appropriate way for institutional messages to reach young recipients, who usually do not share the language, nor the referents, nor the channels through which the institutions tend to launch their bells.
We asked four young people, all of them students or recent graduates in Psychology, and two experts in institutional communication aimed at young people, to tell us about how they perceive this type of campaign and what they miss in them.
Lidia Fernández, 20 years old and in the third year of Psychology at the Complutense University of Madrid, felt indignation when she saw the posters of the metro in Ciudad Universitaria, where many of the messages of the Community of Madrid directed at young people are concentrated.
"They are skewing the population by making them believe that it is the young people who are causing this and they are not assuming their share of responsibility," he highlights.
For her, the slogan "We stop this virus together", launched by the Government in March during confinement, was much more appropriate because it held everyone responsible without blaming a specific group.
Lidia Fernández.
Photo courtesy
"I am aware that parties are held, but many others are responsible. I avoid moving because my father is a population at risk and my circles of friends are also responsible," says the young woman from Madrid by phone.
For Lidia, the key to reaching young people is to adapt the language without falling into the childishness of treating them like children, and she considers that they should use social networks much more because it is where young people spend more time.
Carlos Pérez is 21 years old and is in the last year of his Psychology course at the Miguel Hernández University in Elche.
He has also received the campaign from the Community of Madrid and believes that this type of message can increase anxiety or hypervigilance problems.
"Being told constantly that by infecting another person we are murderers can generate feelings of guilt or fear of telling it for fear of future reprisals. When many times it is not the fault of anyone in particular, you can become infected by complying with all the measures", Explain.
For Carlos, it would be more effective to use positive reinforcement, empathizing with people's efforts to comply with the measures or raise awareness about habits that we do not notice, such as lowering the mask.
"In the Valencian Community they made a video with several testimonies of people who had suffered the disease or had lost their loved ones. I think it was well oriented because it made people empathize. They should put aside those sensational campaigns and create more pedagogical ones", recalls the young man.
Laura Cachón (23 years old) is from Gijón and is studying the Master's Degree in General Health Psychology at the Autonomous University of Madrid.
She believes that these messages, rather than raising awareness, anger the population: "I feel there is a lack of coherence because individual responsibility is emphasized, but then the resources, at a structural level, are insufficient to improve the situation. Meanwhile they continue to ask us more limitations: of movements, leisure or others ".
Laura understands that the campaigns are directed at the emotional part, but she believes that it would be more effective if they began to promote other leisure alternatives where restrictions and security measures can be followed.
Laura Cachón.
Photo courtesy
Elisabeth Vázquez (23 years old) is from Barcelona and is studying 2nd year of psychology at the Open University of Catalunya.
She believes that campaigns that hold young people responsible make them feel that they are the ones who prolong this situation.
"These campaigns should promote better health habits to stop the virus," he specified.
The campaigns preferred by this student are those that encourage collaboration and show how respecting the measures can bring a common benefit.
The young woman affirms that this type of awareness posters have not made her reflect more because before she had already taken all the necessary measures.
"I believe that when you live the situation closely, you are more aware, my father passed the covid in July and now I continue to be prudent when I go to visit him," says Elisabeth.
Elisabeth Vázquez.
Photo courtesy
The communication experts
Fernando Carruesco, marketing expert and director of Talent for the Future, an organization made up of young people between 15 and 34 years old that seeks to establish ties with institutions, considers that the main error in some campaigns is that they have not opened lines of communication with this sector of the population.
"For them to be effective, the main thing is that they are starred, launched and disseminated by young people. There is nothing more convincing than a young man speaking to another young man."
On the other hand, remember that young people feel that governments have turned their backs on them for many years, and find it logical that now they distrust their messages.
The expert warns that the positive is that the institutions have been able to identify the problem and are willing to allocate resources to tackle it even if they have not done so in the right direction.
Carruesco discourages the use of
influencers
since, from his perspective, the level of credibility is based on his area of specialization, and outside of this he ends up seeing a certain antipathy.
"Institutions can continue to open accounts on Tik Tok but, again, I think it is more efficient to dedicate the resources to a group of young people developing the content," he insists.
The youth communication specialist applauds other campaigns such as that of the German government for using humor and a more positive message, as it is more effective in attracting the public.
The approach advocated by Carruesco would be more in line, for example, with the campaign "You will not be contagious for me", developed during the summer by the young actors of the La Joven Theater company with the support of the Hospital 12 de Octubre and Madrid Salud, which began like this: "I know they have told you many times ... I know that you are surely afraid or anxious, or that you think that things are not going with you. But it is not like that. It affects you, a lot".
Campaign image
Pablo Gutiérrez, professor of marketing at the University of León, published in 2010, together with other researchers, a study entitled "The effectiveness of anti-smoking communication campaigns in young Spaniards."
First, he believes that we must not lose sight of the unique challenges of a communication campaign in this context of the coronavirus health crisis.
For example, on this occasion, actions seek results in the short or medium term, when normally behavioral changes tend to be slower and more laborious.
In addition, these campaigns arrive when we have been restricted by the pandemic for many months, which for Gutiérrez would explain a certain feeling of saturation among the public and that prevention messages can be ignored more easily.
The World Health Organization calls this phenomenon "pandemic fatigue" and defines it as "an emerging demotivation" when it comes to following health recommendations and searching for information related to covid.
Hence, this body recommended to the governments in October a decalogue of actions to stop this phenomenon and reinforce common motivation.
One of them, for example, consists of "appealing to the population instead of blaming, scaring or threatening them."
Gutiérrez considers that "the mentions to go out to party or to the close family, such as grandparents, can be a good idea."
However, he believes that these types of references can be approached with a more positive tone.
For example, explaining that if we do things right we can go out to party, meet friends or go on a trip again normally.
The message could be that "if we do not comply with the rules and do not follow the measures, we will not be able to do everything that we like again," according to the expert.
In addition, it considers that more attention must be paid to "using the right channel."
For the campaigns to be more effective, the expert explains, it would be necessary to target more media such as Twitch, where young people are increasingly present.
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