To Talk Better about Vaccines, We Should Talk Less about Vaccines

"What would happen if we stopped inviting the public to rationally concentrate on data, and rather stimulated their emotions through positive messages?"

In the context of an increase in vaccine hesitancy caused in part by the internet and social networks, this commentary analyses the characteristics of typical communication on vaccines, exploring how defensive communication (e.g., debunking and fact checking) may not be effective, according to recent studies on information dynamics on the web. The authors suggest that new models for vaccine communication should be explored and experimentally evaluated, focusing on messages that highlight the positive values of immunisations - thus evoking positive emotions. Finally, they advise the adoption of communication techniques that integrate different promotional methods and suggest the involvement of dedicated multidisciplinary teams to improve the effectiveness of vaccine communication.

The commentary begins by distinguishing product communication and defensive communication, which are common ways to communicate about vaccines. The former describes the strategy of vaccine promotion by focusing on vaccines, their safety, their effectiveness, and their ability to protect against specific diseases. (On the other hand, communication against vaccines is centred on emotions such as fear.) Fact-checking and debunking are two typical examples of defensive communication, which is about reacting to the public opinion on your "product" (in this case, vaccines), in particular when facing a reputation crisis like the authors believe we are now facing with vaccines. Debunking involves containing emotions through science and tackling fears through data. The authors suggest that, in certain contexts, defensive communication might indeed reassure public health professionals and have some positive impact, but it does not truly address negative emotions towards vaccines, which cause hesitancy. Considering that two definite, highly polarised communities exist online - the pro-vaccine and the anti-vaccine - the problem is that debunking resonates only in the scientific echo-chamber and is not able to cross the border to reach anti-vaxers, who have a higher engagement with the community compared to pro-vaxers.

Thus, the commentary makes the case that, beyond focusing communication on product and defensive information, the medical community needs to consider new information strategies to motivate the public. "Forget the vaccine" means conducting an effective communication of a brand, that (apparently) forgets the product itself and focuses on the product's "metaphysical" aspects (the values it represents). This concept is at the base of certain theories of advertising. "The image of a child can evoke a sense of vulnerability. The image of a sick person can evoke fear and anguish. The story of an adult that has accomplished his or her dreams - thanks (also) to vaccines, that have allowed for a healthy growth - has the power of evoking a sense of strength, a positive value. We should start focusing on how vaccines impact on a person's life, not exclusively in clinical terms, but through the invisible values they generate."

Integrated marketing communication is an approach for marketing campaigns that uses different, coordinated promotional methods, which are intended to reinforce each other. Starting from a concept (in this case, the positive emotional values of vaccines), the message is spread through different channels (TV, web, social media, radio, etc.) and using different formats (images, videos, infographics, etc.). According to the authors, in order to apply this kind of strategy to vaccine communication, interdisciplinary collaboration among clinicians, vaccine researchers, behavioural scientists, journalists and communication experts is required to help facilitate, for example: (i) search engine optimisation, a process aimed at increasing the number of visitors to a webpage by improving its visibility on search engines result pages, and (ii) social media marketing techniques, exploiting the potentials of social networks for promoting messages mainly through emotional content.

They conclude that, "Since evidence on the effectiveness of this approach are currently missing, we suggest that a new research agenda is set on investigating the effectiveness of vaccine promotion strategies based on positive messages and on integrated communication. The challenge of this research field is that one size does not fit all. Therefore, potential differences among subgroups and in different national and subnational contexts should be considered and investigated to better tailor communication strategies."