The best take on Boris Johnson’s Sunday night address to the nation came from Matt Lucas. A flavour: “So we are saying don’t go to work, go to work, don’t take public transport go to work, don’t go to work.”
You’ve already seen it, but it’s here in case you haven’t.
If things like that resonate across the nation, you’ve a messaging problem, no?
A common feeling it that he treats us like a bunch of idiots, presumably because that’s how he thinks of us.
His plans were widely mocked, including in the business pages.
But not just there.
One thing he seems to have forgotten is a journalistic rule you might expect him, a journalist, to have at least remembered.
As m’learned colleague Iain Martin put it you don’t do anything difficult as a Sunday for Monday, because there is “increased potential for cock-up and confusion”.
It is a very odd communications strategy for the detail not to be out until a day after the main speech. It looked amateurish, panicky even.
One PR pro thinks the government has become obsessed with slogans, perhaps because “Get Brexit Done” was so successful.
“Stay Alert” is already a failure, it is fair to say.
In 1917 Russia the Bolsheviks did well with the popular slogan “Peace, Land, Bread.”
Since we aren’t Russia in 1917, yet, that isn’t going to work here. The boy needs help.
We’ll print the best ideas we get….