A new report analysing the communication approach to the Covid-19 pandemic in 14 countries shows that the Irish Government’s communications strategy was highly successful in establishing the public’s trust. The global study, entitled ‘What’s Working To Calm Hearts Worldwide‘ , is an industry first, published by the Iprex communications network.
The report includes perspectives from Iprex partners across the United States, APAC and EMEA and serves as a collection of comparative, real-time case studies on communications best practices in the period end of February to early July. Iprex global president Julie Exner said that the Irish Government strategy had a number of success factors.
All decisions were driven by medical and scientific evidence or advice and were mainly communicated to the public by health professionals. It says that Ireland was also one of the first countries to report cases in an accurate manner. Exner said it enabled the government to establish the public’s trust and ensured their communications were taken seriously.
Contrast
In terms of leaders’ public satisfaction ratings at the end of June, India’s Narendra Modi rating dropped back to 75 per cent. Denmark’s Prime Minister Mette Frederikson went to a high of 79 per cent while Leo Varadkar went to 75 per cent. The figures contrast with the likes of Japan and France where approval ratings for their leaders were around 30 per cent.
The report highlights a number of firsts generated by the crisis. In Australia for example, in an unprecedented move, a national cabinet of the Federal Prime Minister and inter-state and territory leaders was convened to meet weekly. While in Poland there was a first ‘ghost’ presidential election held in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
Scheduled for May 10, the election was never cancelled as the ruling PiS Party sought to push through a postal vote, even though Poland has no tradition of postal voting. In the previous presidential election in 2015, just 42,814 people registered to vote by post. This time, ballots were delivered to around 30 million voters at short notice – a vast logistical challenge.
The two round election finally went ahead on June 28 and July 12, with postal and in-person voting. Countries covered in the Iprex study were Australia, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, India, Ireland, Japan, Mexico, Poland, Sweden, the UK and the US. The Irish chapter was co-authored by Jim Walsh, Walsh:PR and Ann-Marie O’Sullivan, AM O’Sullivan.
The full report is available at https://bit.ly/3gKRvoQ
