Scaring people into action can work but it comes at a price

July 18, 2021 â€" 12.00am

Have we learned nothing in 34 years?

The Grim Reaper AIDS advertisement from way back in 1987 only ran for 12 days on national television, but it remains the standard by which other health messages are judged.

Stay safe: the Grim Reaper in the 1987 ad.

It was back in the spotlight again last week as debate bubbled away about the federal government’s latest COVID television commercial featuring a young woman in her 20s - a professional actor - gasping for breath.

The Grim Reaper campaign made advertising “wunderkind” Siimon Reynolds’ career at just 21, propelling him from the obscurity of the marketing world to becoming a household name.

Scare tactics: Grim Reaper campaign master mind Siimon Reynolds.

He certainly has not looked back. In a previous journalistic life I covered the then-glossy, big-budget and even bigger egos of the advertising industry, and watched as Reynolds’ celebrity remained on the ascent. He featured on the most eligible bachelor lists, dabbled in television, published self-help books and today has positioned himself as a sort of new-age business and marketing svengali.

Now in his mid 50s he is a happily married father.

But it is still that old Grim Reaper ad for which Reynolds is best known. Yet the question must be asked: does the ad actually deserve the kudos it continually attracts?

Reynolds believes it does, but concedes - with hindsight - that “advertising is a blunt instrument”, and often there are unexpected and negative social outcomes from even the most well-intentioned campaigns.

“We had to do something big. At the time there was a lot of ignorance and misinformation. I remember reading a newspaper headline asking if you could catch AIDS off a toilet seat,” he recalls.

And he sees parallels with the COVID pandemic today.

“There are the anti-vaxxers, there is a lot of misinformation on social media and apathy, most people don’t know anyone who has had COVID. There is an inertia within the community in the face of something which is a very serious threat to all of us.

“I still genuinely believe we have to scare people into action when things are this serious. The means justify the end.”

Reynolds’ old advertising contemporaries, from Jane Caro to Dee Madigan, have resoundingly panned the COVID commercial, arguing its fear tactics send the wrong message, and that more would be achieved by providing an informed, positive message.

Other critics say it was redundant given the age group represented is not eligible for vaccination and labelled the ad as pointless fear mongering. However Reynolds believes it doesn’t go far enough, and says it looked too glossy to be convincing, let alone shocking.

A still from the government’s confronting COVID ad.

But scaring people into action can come at a price.

Many years after the Grim Reaper ad launched, the late Dr Ron Penny, who diagnosed the first case of AIDS in Australia in 1982 and was a member of the committee tasked by health officials with dealing with the virus, conceded in 2002: “The downside was that the Grim Reaper became identified with gay men rather than as the Reaper. That was what we had unintentionally produced - [the belief] by some that the Reaper was people with HIV infection, rather than the Reaper harvesting the dead.”

Reynolds agrees, but says his objective at the time was solely to create “a wake-up call to Australia” - not to demonise gay men. Penny was also adamant the ad’s impact was “astounding”.

But how that unintended demonisation of gay people manifested on the street was almost as frightening as the virus itself.

Homosexuality had only been decriminalised in NSW three years prior to the Grim Reaper commercials going to air, homophobic discrimination was rife, “poofter bashing” was an actual thing groups of supposedly straight men would do for thrills and being “outed” at work or to family remained a genuine fear.

Even today the Grim Reaper spot makes for sobering viewing with its deadly serious voice over telling middle Australia: “At first, only gays and IV drug users were being killed by AIDS . . . But now we know every one of us could be devastated by it.”

The word “only” would never fly today, but the message is still as emotive as it was then, especially the creepy hooded Reaper bowling down a fog-covered alley taking out human pins in the form of vanilla-looking men, bawling little girls, old ladies, even mothers and their babies.

The new COVID commercial is also confronting. It was created by Brisbane agency Carbon, however its staff have been gagged by the federal government from talking about it, which is a pity, because the ad and overall campaign has got people talking, just as the Grim Reaper did.

While it is going to be some time before we fully appreciate the COVID ad’s true impact, here’s hoping it doesn’t take 34 years to figure it out.

Andrew Hornery is a senior journalist and Private Sydney columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.

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