‘Joy cometh in the morning’ scripture tells us. I certainly hope so.

We’re living in the unknown, every day. We don’t know when this global pandemic will end; we don’t know what our world will look like on the other side; we don’t know how our industry will be in the future, nor whether some businesses will even survive.

And that’s before we get to the most important cost of coronavirus: human life.

We try to make sense of the all too familiar daily briefings, rising graphs, commentary about flattening curves and challenges people are facing. All of it underpinned by the constant reminder to stay at home, protect the NHS, save lives. Rarely is a piece of communication so simple, yet so consequential. I wish I’d been in the room when that line was developed.

During this crisis, the best advertising won’t be recognised as advertising at all: it will be seen as public information.

What are you really bringing to the table, pushing client logos around the plate with a fork? Churning out a clichéd film, slapping together brand messages with bland platitudes to extol some abstract concept of togetherness and vague hope for a better future. The format’s already stale.

The true measure of success, in terms of our industry’s output, will be how seamlessly it blends brand communications into messages that really matter at the moment. Or doesn’t try to, when it’s simply not relevant.

A universal desire to communicate

These times are characterised by a universal desire to communicate, to connect in spite of challenges. And for many of us, one of the side-effects of the lockdown has been reconnecting with old friends. True to this, an old friend I catch up with too infrequently pinged a WhatsApp message late one night, asking whether Bray Leino knew anyone at the major UK mobile phone networks. His name is Dr Joel Meyer, and he’s a consultant at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Intensive Care Unit (ICU). He’d just come off another long and testing shift, but he had an idea that could make a real difference for COVID-19 patients and their families.

With ICU wards filling up across the country, families are prohibited from visiting their sick relatives, some of whom will sadly die. This situation is compounding the distress for patients, families and the strained hospital staff, who often need to rapidly communicate with colleagues elsewhere, sharing vital information about patient care, without leaving the unit, removing PPE, or using personal mobile devices.

Joel, together with Professor Louise Rose at King’s College London, had identified aTouchAway, a specialist app from a Canadian company which could solve the problem. But hospital WIFI proved insufficient to support the system and they had only a limited number of devices to run it from.

The cause and its message was so strong that, within a few days, the team at St Thomas’ and Kings College had elicited an overwhelming response from corporate and charity partners. BT pledging tablets through their partnership with Samsung, Google and MobileIron swinging into action to ensure that the app would work perfectly, with the whole project supported by initial seed funding from the True Colours Trust and the Gatsby Charitable Foundation to the tune of £1m. 

Be with them when you can’t be near them

Joel then asked if we could help name and brand the vital service. Without hesitation or delay, we put some creative brains to work. And within a few hours, the Life Lines brand was born.

Life Lines – be with them when you can’t be near them.

A little while after that the logo was created, emphasising human to human contact and the role of technology to deliver a failsafe, secure solution.

To date, the Life Lines system has been rolled out to over 140 hospitals across the UK, with many more to follow in the coming weeks. The system will become a permanent fixture in every critical, acute and palliative care unit in the country, giving patients, their families and clinicians a much needed and vital communications system.

It goes without saying, the team at Guy’s and St Thomas’, Kings College London, plus of course the nurses, clinicians, doctors, cleaners, porters and other front line staff in the NHS up and down the country, are the real heroes of this crisis. But it’s good to know that our industry can play a part too. To show commitment, and go beyond the norm, without question, in the face of other ongoing challenges. Because sometimes some things are just more important.

Our powers of communication can be a force for good, even under the most testing of circumstances. If anything is to be burned into our collective minds from this crisis, it’s that.