Changing behaviour, protecting the NHS, saving lives: demonstrating the benefits of the Government’s Covid-19 communication activity

The scale of the Coronavirus crisis has been unprecedented, and like other countries around the globe, the UK Government had to act swiftly to stop the spread of the virus, save lives and protect its health service whilst at the same time supporting businesses and the economy. Communication has been an integral part of this response, with the biggest ever paid-for campaign in history working with announcements, digital and social media and partnerships with the public and private sector to change public behaviour, provide support to businesses and sustain trust and longer-term compliance. Setting up an evaluation programme at speed to measure the impact of activity at this scale and then providing results quickly enough to inform emerging priorities whilst still delivering value for the taxpayer required new approaches to setting KPIs, gathering data and demonstrating impact and ROI. In this session, we cover our evaluation strategy, including our consistent approach to setting KPIs, the innovative approaches that we took to gathering and analysing data and how we were able to link the paid-for campaign and communication to lives saved.