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If the Germans are looking for freedom, this man should not be missing: David Hasselhoff (archive picture from 2019)
Photo: FABRIZIO BENSCH / REUTERS
France: Pharrell Williams' song "Freedom" is playing. A woman gets a vaccination, shops open their shutters. A man gets an injection, a restaurant comes to life, the stove is lit. You can still see a syringe in one shoulder, a theater curtain opens. The lights in Parliament go on. Shoulders and syringes. Neon signs flash and - a ferris wheel starts moving! In the crescendo of Williams' ecstatic »Freedom«, culture, people and normalcy return to the streets of France.
Last shot: happy fans cheering in a sports stadium.
For God's sake, they're actually close together!
I'm already twitching while watching.
A protagonist turns from the blue-white-red hustle and bustle into the camera, she wears mouth and nose protection, but is obviously smiling all over her face, you don't even have to see her mouth to see it.
As I look, I involuntarily smile stupidly, inspired back.
One last, emphatic "Freedom", then a female voice whispering off-screen in French: "With every vaccination, life returns."
OK!
After this advertisement, I would prefer to apply the vaccine to myself as a perfume - or drink it in a champagne glass.
Pure.
Germany: David Hasselhoff flexes his arm into the camera and is looking forward to “the freedom, THE FREEDOM, to be vaccinated and to travel around the world.” Then he says with the good-humored seriousness of a former lifeguard: “My most important experience in the Pandemic?
Death. ”Okay.
So.
"Sleeves up."
What is actually going on with the official corona campaign in Germany?
First we are #special heroes who survived the First Pandemic War on the sofa, thanks to the help of the delivery series - and now the vaccination is supposed to be a "Looking for Freedom" -like one-man version of the fall of the Berlin Wall?
I understand what people want from me: the pandemic is a historic event - but does the speech have to feel like an unwanted short film that is submitted to the film fund?
Mainly something related to German history?
And speaking of history: how could it actually happen that the government cast a Berlin doctor as an actor for the videos with which one wanted to reach all Arabic-speaking people (industrious asterisk for the sensible idea!), Who in social media casts the Support Hamas?
With all honest love for the Knight Rider, but this way you get the unbelievably many indecisive and timid people about whom Jens Spahn likes to tweet, not for the vaccination, which everyone should now get quickly.
Yeah, actually we could all have been vaccinated long ago, we just have to "convince at least 15 million people", writes the Minister of Health.
But he already offers the solution, because since June 7th "the company doctors have been vaccinating - that helps some undecided people to reach them better".
This is my pandemic favorite spin: it is not because of the vaccination offers, no, people are still shy.
In view of the current overload of the practices, which are now outsourcing the administration of inquiries and have to defend themselves against aggressive patients who have been rejected, this is really the most creative interpretation of the situation.
How important the political address and the framing of a well-intentioned message really is - i.e. the question of how to sell something to the population - can be seen, for example, in New Zealand, where the citizens successfully won over the measures to end the pandemic through political communication could become.
As a "team of five million" trying to win against the virus, the mobilization of the population was also seen as a collective effort, but above all as a national competition. This was clever insofar as all sporting events and team sports had to be canceled due to the pandemic situation and the desire to win against the virus closed the gap in a competitive offer: It was no longer just about staying healthy or not infecting others, it came now a magical ingredient added to any collective effort: fighting spirit out of defiance.
Incidentally, how sensible it would have been to include the European Championship in Germany - yellow vaccination cards instead of yellow cards.
In general: The word “vaccination pass” offers a lot of punctuated punishments, such as Panini albums, in which golden bio-tech stickers are collected.
In campaign communication in France, culture is returning, in New Zealand they have won against the pandemic, in Germany the government is pretending to have to convince alleged defenders of the vaccination offer with the argument of responsibility.
One tries to trick citizens into something they have been asking for weeks: Freedom.
