Originally published at: Australian ad for Covid vaccine is very Australian | Boing Boing
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This could easily be remade for the U.S. with the smokin’, drinkin’, pillin’, junk-food-eatin’ Know-Nothing denizens of The Heartland ™. A companion ad portraying an affluent Goopy New Age anti-vaxxer couple in the Bay Area would also be fun.
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I like the French one better: Vaccin Covid-19 Gouvernement Santé publique France "tous vaccinés tous protégés" Pub 60s - YouTube
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It’s very Australian… I guess.
But I can’t imagine there’s a single unvaccinated person who would be swayed by the ad. Those left (not a high number anymore!) are likely either far-right “libertarians” or classic hippie anti-vaxxers.
This “ad” (not actually an ad) is just painting scruffy lower-class people (the same type of people the right & the liberal centre brands “dole bludgers”) as stupid drug addicts. There’s no evidence these are the people holding out.
Australia’s on track to reach well over 90% fully vaxxed at this point. This is a fantastic achievement, although we are as usual failing our First Nations people badly. But this ad is smug and off-target IMHO.
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There doesn’t have to be. I think the intention is to paint the holdouts as this type of person as a form of public shaming to motivate them to get vaccinated. They’re portraying a stereotype that everyone universally holds in disregard, and saying if you’re not vaxxed everyone will think you’re one of these people.
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That is advertising genius!
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All the holdouts in Aussi are crackheads?
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I mean… yes? But that’s my point. It’s ugly classist stuff.
But it’s also making some kind of point about people who are apparently happy to smoke or do lines of cocaine, but won’t get vaccinated. It’s pretty easy to look at that and go, “Well I’m not sniffing shit and I’m not having shit injected in me either!”
Draw comparisons with junk food and even smoking, sure - that would probably be a decent ad. But this is just about making middle class people feel pleased with themselves and sneer at the lower classes.
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Maybe not effective for the Ivermectin crowd.
Are you trying to say that only poor people are not getting vaccinated? Because that’s not true at all. There are plenty of examples in the US of people of means leading the charge against vaccination. There is no cost for the vaccine, so that’s not an issue. It is true that many working class people are struggling to find time to get vaccinated (and have time off in case of side effects). But in the US at least, it’s mostly white, middle class Trumpists who are the major subset of holdouts. It’s a political issue, not a cultural or economic one, primarily.
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Oh wow, I may have partied with those dudes back in the day.
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Am double vaxxed Australian, and not a crackhead. Theory holds up.
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I mean, I’m absolutely saying the opposite of that.
The ad, it seems to me, is saying that these working class or lazy bludger types are not getting vaccinated (the hypocrites!), but because they’re an obviously ugly stereotype, it’s probably actually aimed at people who enjoy sneering at those types.
But yeah, the dynamic is not really the same in Australia. There are the Trumpist types, but they haven’t got the same groundswell here (yet, anyway).
And even so, for the assholes of that type that we do have, are they really the target audience for this ad? I doubt it.
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Okay! Thanks for the clarification.
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Can you just drop f-bombs on TV in Australia?
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Can someone who speaks Australian help me with that list bit?
“Deep Dive Dan(?) can leek ma cleet!”
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Yeah, pretty much, tho it’s restricted to certain hours/station discretion etc. Not sure where it came from, but this isn’t an official ad and I doubt it’ll actually air. The official Federal government ad was just someone on oxygen therapy (?) gasping, which should’ve been effective except it was shaming 20 somethings for not being vaccinated, despite them not being eligible for vaccination due to the Federal government’s own fuckup in getting enough vaccines.
Our PM is a failed ad exec, and is colloquially known as “Scotty from Marketing”.
Australia’s success in holding back Covid is largely due to Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews locking down our 2nd most populous state as long and often as necessary to stop it spreading. They’ve been under lockdown more than anywhere in the world, which has lead to him being nicknamed “Dictator Dan” in certain circles.
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I didn’t know the French we so into bowling?
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Well, its still not going to be effective, because 20-somethings know that they are so much less vulnerable. It should instead be showing Grandma dying on a ventilator because the 20-something was so selfish.
You are exactly wrong. The 20-somethings were being blamed across the media and from the political bully-pulpits for being “Vaccine hesitant”, at the same time as they were told that they weren’t allowed to get the vaccine. Sometimes in the same breath.
The 20-somethings were literally begging to have access to the vaccine, to the extent of hanging around vaccination centers at the end of the day hoping that there’d be spare shots which would otherwise be wasted, and if they got them being stuck in that liminal zone of being happy they were doing their part for society, and guilty that they had managed to get vaccinated when so many other people couldn’t. Like disabled people or the first nations people, both of whom were supposed to be in the first priority, and both of which are still behind and trying to catch up.
And if you look at the age demographics (https://www.health.gov.au/resources/publications/covid-19-vaccination-doses-by-age-and-sex) then you’ll see that the younger cohorts are behind in terms of percentage: this isn’t because they haven’t wanted the vax, it’s because they haven’t been able to get through to book one.
I know when booking my younger child (who is 16) in, as soon as it was announced that 16-18 year-olds could do so, it took a whole day of the booking line being so full that it just told you to try again after two minutes of navigating the menu (I timed it), then an hour on hold to get through to an operator, and then another hour while she used her app, and I used an unofficial app, and we both watched appointments become available and vanish by the time we clicked on them until we got a free spot almost by chance.
When we got access to Moderna and they started being given in pharmacies, that, I suspect, is when it actually started making a difference.
TL;DR: it’s not the 20-somethings who need the advertising. What they need is more vaccines, and more opportunities to get them.
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