Covid 19 coronavirus: Government launches new summer ad campaign

Minister Responsible for Covid-19, Chris Hipkins, at the Basin Reserve in Wellington. Photo / Jason Walls

The Government has launched a new $2.5 million advertising campaign aimed at encouraging New Zealanders to continue using their Covid-19 tracer app over summer.

It's called the "Make Summer Unstoppable" campaign and it premiered in the ad break during the Black Caps test in Wellington this afternoon.

Speaking to media at the Basin, the Minister Responsible for Covid-19, Chris Hipkins, said New Zealand should be really proud of its Covid-19 prevention efforts.

"We're one of the few countries in the world that can be doing this," he said, gesturing at the crowd watching the match.

"But we can't take anything for granted. If we want to keep that freedom over the summer, if we want to make summer unstoppable, we all need to keep doing the right thing."

Four ads will playing on Kiwi's TV screens and social media this summer, all following the same theme: encouraging people to scan in.

In one, a man and his partner walk into a pool party but everyone is frozen in time.

"Summer, it's stopped," the man says, asking his partner if she had scanned the Covid-19 tracer app.

As soon as she goes back and scans, the party continues as normal.

Hipkins said the ads were "a little bit lighter" than other Covid-19 ad campaigns the Government had run in the past.

"But it is a reminder to all of us that actually we're very, very lucky compared to the rest of the world, we want to keep that life."

Data from the Covid-19 tracer app shows New Zealanders have been scanning in less and less in recent months.

Hipkins said people tend to relax when things are going well.

The ads, he said, are reminders that "we make our own luck".

"Look at the US and Thanksgiving, for example, they saw a massive increase in the number of cases they were dealing with as people were much more mobile."

He said New Zealanders tended to be much more mobile over summer so the ad was designed to help remind people not to be complacent.

The campaign costs $2.5 million but Hipkins said that was "a fraction" of the cost of another outbreak.