Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes is essential for good communication and crafting a winning message but often can be tough to do.
But what if the job in hand requires putting yourself in 56 million pairs of shoes…at the same time?
That was the challenge I faced in August 2020 when asked to develop the communications strategy for the Covid-19 vaccination programme.
Poor communicators don’t think about an individual person, they think about groups of people. They think about whole industries, entire towns, or cities, or (heaven forbid) ‘the public’.
Which was exactly what we needed to do.
I often say that if you are trying to put yourself in too many people’s shoes at once you will fail. Your message will be too generic. You will fail to connect.
When I am running workshops, I often ask attendees to close their eyes and conjure up in their mind the ideal person who they want to be communicating to. I then ask those I’m coaching to describe in detail that person – right down to where they are, what they are doing and what shoes they are wearing.
Getting scores of civil servants, government communicators and staff at organisations such as the NHS and Public Health England to do this was sadly impractical. (Although I’d have loved to have seen them do this - even over a video call.)
So instead, as the strategy moved into tactical implementation ahead of the first vaccine given to Maggie Keenan by Matron May Parsons on 8th December 2020, I borrowed a simple test from academics at Stanford University by which I measured all our tactical communication.
Was it clear in its AIM?
Was it clear who the Audience was?
Was it clear what the Intent was?
What is the Message?
This didn’t mean that we were saying one thing to one person and something entirely different to another. What it did mean was an emphasis on one part of the message over another, use of TV or radio over social media, and a recognition that every one of the 56 million had a unique perspective that needed to be respected.
The first set of polling numbers I saw indicated that less than half of the adult population was willing to take a vaccine when asked. So, while we were clear in what our intent was on a macro scale – get everyone to take the vaccine when asked – we needed to understand two things; the positive motivations and the barriers to people accepting a vaccine when asked to come forward and take one of relatively small sub-sections of the public.
It was then possible to create work streams who had the aim to reduce the level of hesitancy in the public broadly but focussed on a specific motivation or barrier. In doing so we were able to put ourselves in the shoes of a 62 year old white women from Liverpool, a 55 year old Bangladeshi man from north London and a 45 year old first generation woman from Ghana, as well as many millions of others.
If I can take you back to the late evening of 1st December 2020 to bring AIM and its benefits to life.
For one final time I reviewed the messages and briefing documents prepared ahead of the announcement to be made at 7am the next morning, that the Pfizer vaccine was approved for use in the UK – and would be available just a week later.
Something was nagging at me that on paper all was fine but what ministers, scientists and clinicians were going to say was too impersonal. It wasn’t what you might say to someone face-to-face about news so significant and exciting. It didn’t capture the emotion of what this vaccine meant to many who were living in fear for them, their loved ones, and their communities. It was not clear in its AIM.
That’s when I suggested a simple, positive line that aced the AIM test.
Audience 1: Those living in fear and at most risk of Covid.
Audience 2: Those whose hesitancy was based around waiting for someone else to have a vaccine first.
Intent 1: Reassure people and give them extra resolve through a tough winter.
Intent 2: Build excitement about vaccines.
The message?
“Help is on the way”.
Indeed, it was.