Why only 12% of your campaign will be understood, and what you can do to improve the odds.

I'm going to talk about why only 12% of the messages that the government are giving about coronavirus are being understood by the population of the UK. Osmo Antero Wiio was a Finnish academic who wrote what has become known as Wiio's law appropriately enough when he was a member of parliament between 1975 and 1979. He published them in what is called the weekend late Java Han. Music in apologies to any fans out there for this terrible pronunciation. But he's theories over the systemic challenges facing all communication have been on display by the British Prime Minister and the cabinet ministers here and actually all over the world. Essentially, Windows law predicts that an audience Understand only some 12% of a message being given due to the many biases and interference is taking place whilst they're supposed to be paying their undivided attention. So his law says that communication usually fails except by accident. Now, the International US media outlet cnn following the speech by Prime Minister Johnson on the 10th of May, said that the packed London tube trains are the latest symbol of the UK is confused Coronavirus response. So, the mainstream media internationally we're picking up on the fact that the British public relations exercise by the government was leading to more confusion than clarification. So how is that let's just dive into Leo's law, which will give us some insights into why these kind of carefully planned campaigns can go wrong. There are some basic tenants of Windows law. First one is if communication can fail, it will. If communication cannot fail, it still most usually does fail. If communication seems to exceed in the intended way, there's been a misunderstanding. If you're content with your message communication certainly fails. Point number two. If a message can be interpreted in several ways, it will be interpreted in a manner that maximises the damage. Point number three, there is always someone who knows better than you what you meant with your message. Number four, the more we communicate, the worse communication succeeds. 4.1 The more we communicate, the faster misunderstandings propagate. Number five in mass communication, the important thing is not how things are, but how they seem to be number six The importance of a news item is inversely proportional to the square of the distance. In other words, the further away we are, the less important that news is to us. And number seven, the more important the situation, the more probably you forgot an essential thing that you remembered a moment ago. I'll repeat that. The more important the situation is, the more probably you forget an essential thing that you remembered a moment ago. So now let's just address the first law. The reasons communications fail are due to multiple causes. And the problem is that they are not static but dynamic and are also not the same for everyone. Let's just take one of the biggest ones how we speak to one another. Language is not universally held to mean the same thing by different people. In spite of standardisation. In addition to idioms due to regional dialects, there are the associations in the contract. with certain words have now when I heard the new strap line in the UK stay alert, I was thinking of the bomb alerts on the underground and the old school boy joke Be alert, the country needs more alerts. Others would as had other associations, the central issue is that stay alert does not have a universal meaning for the entire audience that the Prime Minister has been addressing. But it also doesn't tell us to be alert in what way or where or when it's too generic to be functional. So they're attempting to be generic for everybody. But their lack of specificity meant that it really wasn't a valuable message to anybody. Now within hours, laws two and three were going into effect in May the 10th after the Prime Minister had spoken, and laws two and three just to remind you, where that if a message can be interpreted in several ways It'll be interpreted in a manner that maximises the damage. And the third is that there's always someone who knows better than you what you meant with your message. So within hours of the government's announcement about lockdown measures, there were critics and commentators who created memes on the internet, shared snippets of the presentations on social media but a sound bites and they made the 30 minute address into this smorgasbord of different anecdotes and observations. Now, those who watched the Prime Minister's address went on to explain it to the others. But as they did that, the message became more corrupted as the ambiguity of the message led to reinterpretation by those commentators. Now with social media 4.1 the law about the the amplification, without filtration or consideration, So we often share before we think, which is why Twitter Of course now I've just added this new rule that we have to actually have read an article before we can share it. People started to interpret the new stellar laws. And the declining blue line of unlocking on the charts, showed society had been given some PowerPoint clipart but not really metrics beyond the r one. So if we were in favour of more exercise in public and gains with a family member, we shared those parts of the message. But if we were not in favour of more exercise, or if we didn't have a family, and we were not interested in the family games, then we wouldn't have shared those key parts of the message. Now, according to the Business Insider, a UK newspaper The UK government's attempts to loosen the Coronavirus lock down, were thrown into chaos after the senior Boris Johnson's government completely contradicted the new rules outlined by the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister. This is rule number four, where somebody else will reinterpret what they thought they'd heard. Now, rule five is that in Mass Communications, the important thing is not how things are, but how they seem to be. And I'll raise my own personal observations here. Firstly, during the presentation, Boris Johnson was alone in mentioned house, and it seemed as though he's still in isolation, but in very nice surroundings, unlike most people, but also that he kept on clenching his fists. Now according to the language project, in one sentence, clenching their hands or balling them in a fist is a sign of repressed aggression. So, so who is the prime minister having aggression towards so one person addressing a nation which is phase locked down in often tight quarters, the prime minister was living in expensive space in solitary confinement, with a large chandelier, some very nice panelled rooms, no flowers, no decoration, no soft touches at all. This was a chance to give hope. And even just some other people around in the background who could have been his aides, or even some paintings or some flowers, just to make it look a little bit more homely, a little less austere. So how is the prime minister showing that he was alert, or in tune with the reality of those people watching often in uncomfortable surroundings in lockdown? So the graphics that the British government have been using to communicate about the lockdown have been childlike, at best and with homeschooling prevalent, I had one that is somewhat taken advantage of their children's ability to use PowerPoint to create them. Now this is a nation, the British one Which leads the world in creativity, education and technology. And all we've managed to have is a simple. One formula, which I appreciate, is supposed to be simple so that everyone can understand it. But it's to the degree almost so simple as to have no complexity at all, the COVID alert level is on which is the rate of inflection plus the number of infections. So the simplicity of the message, as there are about real statistics and real testing, infection and the progress of the spike. Now, we didn't get any of those kind of numbers and statistics in the government presentations. But it would have been useful to do so. There was a larger my sort of humpback whale style diagram showing up and then along glide down with different steps of opening up but the measures didn't have any any scales. There was no real time and no real number. So the opportunity to educate and to inform and to reassure the population has been missed. Now law number six means that the smaller objects about datas are more important if they're close by, and then the more important ones that might be further away. So this is this idea of the inverse proportion of distance to importance. So this is why the key rules about locked down and how they impact individuals are the most important to everybody because those are the immediate actions and the repercussions that we're all thinking about. So this is where the current lack of clarity has always been the most distressing because these are the nearest points that are dear and important to us all. So we can go to work. We can return the children to school but not all of them. Can we go to restaurants and gyms but there's a two metre rule for some, some people can go to certain places to eat, and some people cannot. And now there's a new rule where if you're a single person, you can go to another person's house to socialise. But you can't if you're a couple. So the Steeler message was not really what people needed to hear We, of course, we're all going to stay alert. We're not going to be careless about our health or that of the health of our loved ones. But under what circumstances should precautions be taken? Now having made a stern threat about increased fines for violation, the Prime Minister then made it unclear what those violations would be. And as we saw, then, from the case of Dominic Cummings, the special counsel to the Prime Minister, who then took trips, back home to Durham, and there was no ramifications at all the conversations now really are The one if you have to go on a visit somewhere that you just do Adamic Dominic Cummings. So, in my desire to find the answers in the 13 minutes speech to camera, I certainly fell foul of rule number seven. And just to remind you of where I was law number seven, the more important the situation is, the more probably you forget an essential thing that you remembered a moment ago, the charts that were used to illustrate the nature of the issue, said we must have a world beating system with fists clenched firmly on the desk, but they didn't state how much money is being invested nor the actual testing statistics. Now, what we know is that the IT system there was announced in May that will be ready, vaguely the prime minister said in time, we've learned this weekend. The technology that they deployed wasn't compatible with Android and with iOS. So the system that was announced May has been tried on the Isle of Wight and has not succeeded. So small note that the Prime Minister speech was 13 minutes and 41 seconds long. 13 minutes is an unlucky number in societies in the West. And they could have maybe drawn it to 18 minutes, which, at least for audiences from Asia, would have been beneficial because eight is of course considered a lucky number. So how do these messages that we're getting from the government as we go back to work, the children start to go back to school or stay alert? How do they conform to our east west PR mindset approach, which I outlined in one of our articles on our website called the viral PR mindset in there, I say that we should be compassionate, optimistic, values based informative and digital compassionate. Yes, we got the empathy, although certainly the time the chandeliers and the other formalities of the government presentations so far on a Sunday evening. haven't made us feel at home or resonating with the government? Have they been optimistic? Well, we'll beat this at some ill defined time in the future with unknown resources being applied, it doesn't give a lot of reassurance. Is it values based? Well, there was respectful sacrifices, but not really a call to arms, more a threat to people who don't follow up with the rules, which of course, then, as we've seen, with Dominic Cummings weren't respected. The remedial graphics and the no mentions of mass and the new task force meant that for me, the Prime Minister's messaging so far has not been as informative. As for example, some retailers have been now the digital component, which is the new app. Of course, it has come and gone and there's no mention of when the new one will arrive. There hasn't been mentioned of using the kind of heat sensors that they use in China, for example, in Singapore. So now let's just turn our mind to why those messages will be misunderstood by the general population that are tuning in and listening to the Prime Minister. In a statistical model explained to me by professor and fellow within UK Coppola, while the messenger may have the best of intentions, it's the recipients who will determine the effectiveness of a message being communicated to them. And he explains why these are the fundamental reasons why we as law comes to effect because there are a list of reasons how and why people will interpret a message to suit their own paradigm. They include their physical and emotional biases, their language, their cultural background, their age, their gender, their race, their health, the time of day, they're listening to this, their exhibit anxiety levels that they're perceived bias fatigue, hearing loss, medication, intoxication, just simply not paying attention. Mr Coppola, who is formerly at the Helsinki University of Technology, and I've been in correspondence and what He has said to me is to clarify that a single misunderstanding in any essential area destroys the message. So if you know the arithmetic, you can see the odds are really against you. In the original calculation, they talked about there being 20 variables. And that gives a figure just 12% of the message being understood. So we have a case where billions of Britons haven't understood the message. But most of us have certainly not understood all of the message. Now, I'm not making political comments here. But the judgement and simplification of a message during times of crisis is not just about the person who is relaying the message. But it's also about those people who are going to be receiving the message and how they're going to be receiving it, where they're going to perceiving it. And when there are very many variables that will impact they're both there. receptivity to that message and their understanding and their comprehension. So, we have to be careful when we're giving out messages, that there's a staggeringly low chance of people understanding what we're saying possibly as low as 12%. So, as you work, and we work to communicate to our audience groups, our customer base in staff base, and our partners over the coming weeks, let us just think about Windows law, that if we're going to communicate, the chances are that we're going to miss communicate. So what can we do to reduce the likelihood of miscommunication? And how can we use our body language and sign language and our graphics to to reduce the chance of miscommunication and increase the impact of the proactive COVID mindset that we need in order to make it Everybody feel positive, reassured and to get back to normal life.