Blog post

Australia’s Great Vaccine Roll Out: Communicating through the COVID-19 Inoculation Initiative

We are fast approaching one of the largest health undertakings in 60 years, since the move to eradicate polio in the 1950’s. Australia’s vaccination initiative presents a mammoth challenge for everyone, particularly communicators. From government at all levels, to aged and health care services, to logistics providers as we distribute the vaccine; to the business community at large, such as corporates & NGOs. From the retail sector right through to education, travel and tourism, this impacts all of us as we work through the mass inoculation initiative of 2021.

With that in mind, planning and tracking, and measuring the execution of your communications strategy has never been more important. At Isentia, our Insights and Research team can support you with this important task, with a range of media intelligence and in-depth analysis solutions to help.

It’s also important to note that our research is not just for the PR & Media team, it’s used at all levels of an organisation across multiple role types, from HR teams, through to Strategy & Engagement teams. We just use the media (including social media), and/or the general public through our survey capabilities as a source of information. 

Here are some of the questions we can help answer and some ways we can support you around the COVID-19 vaccination roll out:

How do I track the effectiveness of our communication on vaccination?

Isentia Policy Insights is a great way to understand how your initiatives and approaches are being received. Isentia will help you to navigate through the communication stages of vaccination and policy/regulation around vaccine directives, tracking your effectiveness. Using a customised approach to meet your needs Isentia can draw upon contextual social media analysis, survey data and traditional media analysis. This can help you to understand what narratives are being put into the market, how people are reacting to them and how attitudes are shifting. Most importantly for policy analysis, Isentia always digs deeper than just assessing attitudes and narratives to assess risks and opportunities for your organisation and help you plan your communications strategy. For example, you could deep dive into the conversations around vaccine hesitancy and look at addressing trending topics around this.

I’m planning our communications strategy around the vaccine and would like to understand what’s worked in other countries who are already in the execution phase of their vaccination roll out.

Isentia’s International Media Insights will allow you to analyse media coverage from other countries around the world, to examine some of the emerging issues, message cut through, and considerations which could be applied to your strategy and remit. Isentia’s International Media Analysis is an ideal way to leverage the benefit of Australia’s position, where we can learn from other countries who have gone before us with the vaccine. Isentia can provide you with in depth research and evaluation of other countries vaccination communication programs. This combined with a pulse check of the current sentiment and issues around vaccination in the Australian media would be a powerful tool, for evidence and research-based planning.

Vaccination can be contentious, how can I stay across the broader narratives and look for risk and opportunities that are relevant to my communication?

Isentia’s Insights team can help you identify what narratives are being discussed in traditional media and how conversations are evolving on social media. Through contextual social media analysis we can see the effect of different communications on public response, and our audience sentiment analysis can look at how various people are thinking and feeling about the vaccine and how they respond to new information. Our award-winning Insights team has decades of communications experience at its disposal, and doesn’t just analyse data for you but can help to workshop the findings and discuss effective communication strategies in a volatile period.

How can I see the most influential voices on vaccination, is there anything I can learn from who leads the discussion?

Isentia can help you identify the highest impact influencers, what they are saying and where their messaging aligns with yours as well as where it diverges. Using our Media Impact Score we can provide a standardised methodology to assess the effectiveness of each influencer to provide you with a data-driven method to identify key targets. We can also categorise those targets so that you not only know who to contact, but about what. We are experts in isolating and identifying nuanced mischaracterisations that are being communicated to the market and help you more effectively work to counteract misinformation about your policy and activities but also about issues like vaccines in general.

I work in the aged care sector, I want to understand my position and overall reputation – I want to use the vaccination approach to rebuild some trust, particularly following the Aged Care Royal Commission

Reputation and Audience Sentiment Analysis at Isentia combines survey and social media research to assess what people are thinking and saying about a brand or an issue, and most importantly what’s driving those opinions. The aim of our research is not only to provide you with benchmarks and an overview of opinion, but to help drive strategic and tactical conversations within your organisation about your communications activities.

How do I stay across the issue broadly? I want to track what’s being said around vaccinations in Australia.

Isentia has a number of Daily Briefing options available, from daily weekdays, or 7 days a week coverage or a weekly subscription. This round up of key news, collated by an expert editor provides a snapshot of coverage relating to the vaccination, so you are fully informed. This serves as a tool for tactical response on a day to day basis, and helps you manage your response to a story that is constantly developing and changing rapidly. With the Daily COVID Vaccination Briefing, we make sure you haven’t missed any key stories, and will help you digest the key information as quickly as possible so that you are fully prepared for the day ahead.

I need to communicate with non-English audiences around the vaccination. How can I gain trust and confirm that my message is being heard?

At Isentia, we have a CALD media monitoring service which monitors non-English print publications along with online sources. We can also analyse the effectiveness of your communications through media analysis, and identify any misinformation and ensure your messages are getting traction.

To learn more or to speak to a consultant, get in touch today.