Paint the whole world with a rainbow…

By Louise Palfreyman

No communications strategy, even one seeking to pin down a rapidly changing and constantly evolving target, needs to resort to what happened this week.

The garish transformation of newsstands into displays that wouldn’t look out of place in a KS1 corridor marked a transition into a surreal new dystopia, one where the dictatorship infantalises its subjects and coos them into compliance.

Mastheads were lost in a sea of colour blocking. It was all a bit Devil Wears Pravda

You can imagine the meetings: everyone falling over themselves in their enthusiasm for this most technicolour of love bombings; mock-ups declared the perfect alignment of folk iconography with pithy slogan. Cummings, suppressing a smile, nods a tacit approval and Operation Full Spectrum gets the green light.

National and regional editors alike were forced into the ignominy of the rainbow wraparound as the industry continued to breathe its last gasps. And as is so often the case when a paper has to succumb to the coverwrap, the inside splashes tried hard to recover some dignity: the i and The Metro lashed out at the PM; the Mirror slammed suggestions of a public sector pay freeze; The Guardian highlighted the failure to prepare care homes; The TImes cautioned against raising taxes; and The Telegraph heralded a new antibody test.

But the trouble with the wraparound, particularly a stapled one, is that it just will not go away. Close your newspaper and there it is, as brash and insulting as the first time you laid eyes on it.

And this one was so breathtakingly patronising. Beyond patronising, in fact… something so much worse.

They’re taking the piss, was all I could think. Then, no… surely not. I have tried to reason with myself more than once that coronavirus presents a situation of such gravity, such peril, that no, they couldn’t possibly be having a laugh on the sly.

How wrong I was.

Because how else are we to read We can help control the virus if we all Stay Alert! when it is juxtaposed so devilishly with the rainbow that has come to symbolise the childlike hopes of a nation seeking comfort where it can?

How else are we to read Keep our distance, wash our hands, think of others and play our part? and not end with ‘Thank you baked potato?’ And then, on the inside page: Work from home if you can, right alongside Stay 2 metres apart – Keep your distance when at work.

Like I said, taking the piss.

At the bottom, right: All Together > (now, thank you baked potato) … leading us to an inside back page of urgent but inchoate ramblings: Play your part… We can control the virus by keeping the rate of infection down… If we all follow the rules… This will save lives and livelihoods… Together we can do this…

And then a back page exhorting us to Stay 2 metres apart, with a Red Arrows love heart trail.

It’s as though someone from comms was at Johnson’s bedside a few weeks ago, transcribing his ICU delirium and keeping the best bits.

How much did all this cost? An alleged £45 million for a three-month campaign running across national and regional titles. A campaign that has seen us move inexplicably from Stay at Home to We can help control the virus if we all Stay Alert.

At the launch, back in April, Michael Gove said: "Newspapers are the lifeblood of our communities and we need them now more than ever. Their role as a trusted voice and their ability to reach isolated communities is especially vital at this time. With this campaign, we are both saving lives by providing essential information to the public and supporting cherished local institutions."

I wonder how many newspaper editors saw this week’s jostle of rainbows and adspeak as anything approaching essential information?

And how many of them were comfortable taking the money from OmniGOV, the outfit that manages the Government’s media buying?

I felt for them. And I bought two of the papers, just to read in full what they would have splashed on had they not had their hand forced by propagandists trying to spin their way out of a pandemic.

Louise Palfreyman is a writer and journalist.