Communicating in a crisis

The world is going through a very tough time.  There’s no way around it.  But there are ways to communicate important messages that can cut through and be heard.

At Moonshine Agency we’ve needed to communicate important health messages on a number of occasions.

We’ve drawn on this experience to create a new series of important health messages during the Covid 19 pandemic.  They are very specific and customised videos, tailored to suit each community they are targeting in the Top End of Australia.

In this weeks episode of the Moonshine Moonshot series, Mike and Sue are sharing how they did this to help you with key takeaways you can apply to your own work.

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to the Moonshine Moonshot Podcast. Here we are live in lockdown. So it's a pretty different scenario we find ourselves in from this episode, but we're going to be talking to you still about impact, how to make an impact, and why it's important that your video work does make an impact. I'm Sue Collins.

SPEAKER_00 0:18

And I'm Mike Hill. Thanks for tuning in, everyone. Hoping you're keeping safe and well. I know it's a really hard time for a lot of people around the world, so thanks very much for tuning in. We're still all about the big moonshot, how to make the impossible possible, and we think that that's actually going to be more important than ever as we come out the other side of this global pandemic.

SPEAKER_02 0:41

Yeah, it's been um it's been quite a ride these past few months. We're quite fortunate being in Australia. I think we're in a much better position than many people around the world, but something that we had to almost immediately take on in our business with Moon Shine Agency was communicating a crisis message to a number of Indigenous communities across the top end of Australia.

SPEAKER_00 1:05

Yeah, so we've taken the opportunity today to talk about communicating during a crisis. This is not the first time we've needed to do crisis communications, but clearly this is the biggest crisis that has faced most of us in our lifetimes. And you know, it's going to be something that defines us. So yeah, today's topic is communicating during a crisis. And I think the very first thing to be mindful of, of course, is to meet people where they are. I don't know if others of you out there are feeling like I do, um, particularly in the early days of this pandemic crisis. I found it very confronting and actually a little bit offensive to be getting marketing, communications, people coming and selling me things. Often the Autobots, you know, out there firing me automated um emails and the like. Uh, and I don't know about you, but I've unsubscribed to a lot of uh newsletters and and mailing lists during the last month or so for that reason. So I think the first thing is be sensitive to where people are. This could be the most challenging period of their lives. That doesn't mean communication should stop, but it does mean that it needs to be handled sensitively.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

Yeah, I think I think it's really an interesting thing because there was first um this influx of every single um thing I had subscribed to in any capacity sending me emails, COVID-19, you know, information, and and it was it was so overwhelming and understand why everyone had to do that, but it was literally every single email in my inbox was addressed COVID-19, and that created quite an overwhelming kind of sensation just checking my email. So I think it's about you need to acknowledge obviously that that this situation's going on and be sensitive to it, but at the same time, most of us are still trying to run a business, we are still trying to do what we do to the best of our ability. So it's about how do you speak into that space with sensitivity and um compassion, but also the world still needs to keep moving. So where's that balance?

SPEAKER_00 3:20

Yeah, and look, the world's listening too, because we can't just, you know, oversaturate ourselves only with one story. And I think as people spend more time in isolation and at home, they want to connect, they want to grow, they want to learn, and they want to prepare for how to best bounce back after this crisis. And of course, communications uh is a key part to that. So I don't think this period means we need to stop communicating, but the way we communicate needs to change. Um, so today we'd like to actually do something a little bit different and share a video with you, um, which is a video that we created. Uh, you may know that uh we've done a lot of work in Indigenous Australian health over the years. Uh so for background for those of you who aren't from Australia, uh, regrettably, um, Australia's particularly remote Indigenous communities have some of the highest rates of chronic disease in our country and probably in the world, uh, which means that they're an extremely vulnerable population when it comes to COVID-19. So we pivoted quickly once we realized that the pandemic was coming here and could potentially threaten these communities to work with five different top-end communities. We call them top-end because they're from the top end of Australia, to share key health information about the coronavirus, um, but in a way that was messaged by first Australians for first Australians. So we'd like to share that with you now.

SPEAKER_01 4:56

Hello there. For those of you who don't know me, my name's Lorraine Garpindi White. I am a Goodmok woman from Western Arnhem Land. I'm an artist and I also work at MITS, the Melbourne Indigenous Transition School. By now you will have heard about coronavirus, which is also called COVID-19. I'd like to share some important health information with you today about how you can protect yourself, your family and your community from that virus. COVID-19 is spreading everywhere quickly, so we need to stay safe now. This is an important health message because the coronavirus can make people very sick or even die. You will need to keep doing these things for a long time to keep safe from COVID-19. So keep clean, keep a distance of at least two arms length apart from everyone. Call the clinic if you're sick, keep taking your medicine and getting your needle on time every time. That's it. Stay safe, everyone, and look after yourselves.

SPEAKER_02 5:56

Yeah, so I think um that I mean that's quite a literal uh how to communicate in a crisis. It's a very direct, very specific, important health message that um we created there in a number of different languages to serve a number of different communities in the top end. Um we were fortunate enough to have actually had a lot of um footage on file from previous work we were doing, so that made it possible to create appropriate overlay footage for specific communities that really represented them. Um and Mike, perhaps you can tell us a bit more about the language and and how that happened.

SPEAKER_00 6:35

Well, maybe even more important than the language is the voice or what we've talked about in previous podcasts, the messengers. Um, so a lot of the health information we're getting around COVID-19 in our country is coming to us in the form of government-run advertising. Uh, it's using animation, very generic animation, and voice over. Uh, we're also getting some pretty strong messages from politicians as well coming through um uh sponsored advertising on social media and also uh through broadcast TV. And we just felt like that had the potential to really miss the mark for the audience we were hoping to communicate to. Uh, so voice and having the very authentic voice of Gabindi right there from the start. Uh, talking to other first Australians, I think was an important choice. Um, also not overcomplicating the language with medical jargon, and there's a lot of medical jargon flying around at the moment. Um, and of course, where possible, talking to people in their first languages.

SPEAKER_02 7:44

Yeah, and I I think it's really effective in the way it's all kind of come together to deliver that message, and the communities have responded really positively to it, and they're taking on that message, and they seem to really understand the films, which is great because I think something that um yeah, I think this is probably true right across the world is the communications around this coronavirus is so complicated and hard to understand. I mean, we ourselves were trying to distill the other day when they say you need to be in a room with someone for half an hour before you can contract it from them, why is that? And you know, is it about breathing on each other? You know, it's it but it's is that actually even an important thing to be telling people if we're all so socially distancing? So there's there's so much confusing information, and you really just want just give me the facts, man, you know, like just give me the info that I need. And I I think the videos we've created really drill down into that. They just get to the really key messages.

SPEAKER_00 8:46

Yeah, that's right. And I think there's some visuals in there that help make sense of some of the social distancing, which is such a front as a concept, you know, not just to first Australians, but to most of us. So I think, you know, Govindi's, you know, two arms and doubling uh, you know, is a very visual way to get through that message. Um and really showing some of the bring show, don't tell, I think is another key part of it. Showing some of the key messages there rather than it just always being uh didactic, we're telling you uh how this needs to be. I think uh tone is another thing we could touch on. It's generally a pretty upbeat, positive, hopeful tone. And I think um that's really important for this audience, but it's really important for us all at the moment, I think, given what we're going through.

SPEAKER_02 9:38

Yeah, I agree. Um it's it's really hard to take on a message when it feels really doom and gloom and um the world's gonna end. And you know, at the beginning of this pandemic, I mean, I'm speaking obviously as an Australian where our situation is far better than the most of the world currently, so it's easier to have a more positive feeling towards it all at the moment. We feel like there's a light at the end of the tunnel. I'm sure there's a lot of people who are um still in the thick of it. Yeah, still in and you know, experiencing some pretty terrible hardships created, you know, economically as well as you know, uh the health implications of this. Um I've completely lost my train of thought there, but um communicating into a into a crisis. So you're tone, positive.

SPEAKER_00 10:22

I think you were talking about tone, positivity. So uh, you know, some of the key points when we're summarising how to communicate in a crisis that we've talked about today, as Dame Cecily famously said, meet people where they are, not where you want them to be. I think that's really important to have empathy at this time. I think it's important to think about who the messengers are and the voice and tone of the communication you're making. Um, and that, you know, really uh that universality of we're all in this together. Um, and you know, this is now a time when we need to work together more than ever to get through and on the other side of it um to rebuild and put our lives back together. So I think they would be some of my key take-home messages around communicating during a crisis.

SPEAKER_02 11:11

I'd agree with all of that. So um hopefully this information's been quite helpful to those of you who are listening who also got, you know, important health messages or other um any message. Any any sort of message that you're needing to share. Um, yeah, keep it authentic, wherever possible, use you know, um, the voice of someone who's very similar to the people you're trying to speak to. Um, keep it really simple and um yeah, try to keep it as upbeat as possible, even though it is a really serious message. Try to deliver it in a in an upbeat kind of way that makes it easier for people to actually take that message on.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

We'd love to hear from you as always. So if you have any questions about communicating in a crisis, you might have some logistical ones, things that we've been grappling with a lot. How do you get high-quality video captured during you know, a period of social isolation and distancing? Uh, what other resources can you draw on? You mentioned library assets before, that's a key part of it. Um, just get in touch, send us your questions, we'd love to hear from you, and we will respond in an upcoming podcast or get back to you directly through social media.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

And if you'd like to see more of the um the videos that we made for the indigenous communities in the top end, just um jump onto the Take Heart RHD Facebook page and they're all on there, so you can get some really good examples and a really good sense of um how they were put together and very open to any questions you might have about those as well.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

Okay, until next time, everyone, stay safe, keep well.

unknown 12:42

Bye.