Mark Dalton

AR How did the project come about?

MD I think the main reason we were approached is that over the years we’ve done a few, much smaller emergency responses for the New Zealand government. The response to Covid-19 was coordinated across all of government, and the client team leading it had worked with us on some of those previous projects. They reached out to us because they were given a very short time to respond and were looking for people with relevant experience.

AR What was your brief and timescale?

MD The brief was pretty broad. We had to come up with a way of communicating clear and helpful messages to New Zealanders across whatever platforms or media channels we thought would be appropriate. And we had to get it to market within a week.

AR That’s a very short period of time. Was the choice of key themes and tone left to you, or was the government prescriptive?

MD It was very much a collaboration. We knew that our best result would be to ask people to do something and tell them why. So, we had to work with our clients to work out what we could say that would be effective and useful. There were moments when we had to go away