An Open Letter to Governments from Covid-19 Marketing Team

Dear Governments from all around the world,

As covid-19 worldwide tracker continues to report new cases and deaths, you are all updating social restrictions and wondering about the future of your country, your people and your businesses. 

Most of you have already been relying, or going to rely soon, on location tracking Apps to inform your National Alert Systems. Below, I’ve analysed the performance of some of these Apps, since I think it’s a vain mirage to rely mostly on location data to defeat the infectious enemy.

Status Update on Contact Tracing Apps

Here is a list of the twenty-eight countries currently using a contact tracing App: Algeria, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brazil, Bulgaria, Colombia, China, Czech Republic, India, Indonesia, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates, Georgia, Iceland, Norway, Poland, Romania, Russia, and Ecuador. 

What do they all have in common? Something to do with culture, political history, and modern social constraints. Somewhat different from other countries such as Italy, Spain, France, and the United States; who have all delayed deployment of their contact tracing Apps due to government discussions around data ethics. Although privacy concerns could be somewhat resolved with mandatory regulations or facultative incentives, something else is preventing full functionality of the App.

Performance Review 

Let’s analyse the actual performance of such contact tracing Apps, just like we would do after launching a marketing campaign for a new service App. First of all, we will want to take a look at potential and actual reach, calculating success rate based on Mobile KPIs, such as CPA and downloads. 

 In the era of covid-19, the only KPI that matters is the number of new cases or deaths. So, I looked at the numbers of new cases and deaths registered in the last 24 hours* among those twenty-eight countries and only two countries reported zero new cases and deaths. 

Moreover, across a random sample, the success rate of the App is way below average and still far from reaching ideal targets. Why? Because to make a contact tracing App useful to track and prevent covid-19, you don’t need only the cool factor but a minimum target of downloads and active users. At least 40% of the population must have downloaded and enthusiastically using the App, like an influencer is using TikTok, as reported by ABC.     

Numbers are approximate but based on actual population numbers and total App Downloads, as reported on official sites. Note: The analysis is optimistic, considering that I've used downloads rather than actual daily users. 

There are several technical and social limitations related to the use of these Apps. For now, it’s a sci-fi fail, considering the inaccuracy of bluetooth and GPS technology in a situation of social distancing, as well as the slow adoption from consumers. Nevertheless, more countries are investing tax-payers money into funding more of these techy solutions, engineers and MIT Academics rather than sending a tampon to those who have declared to have symptoms. 

So, dear governments, here is a tough performance review of your covid-19 efforts, necessary to reset expectations and determine next steps:

• Overall performance is stagnant and falling behind. 
• You are far from reaching the minimum target and keep counting new cases and deaths globally, with or without creepy location tracking. 
• It’s hard to believe you can optimise and achieve a positive success rate given the broad and stubborn target audience.

We have to wait for Apple & Google to save the day, which is scheduled to happen in mid-May. Two more weeks, hopefully by then governments will consider all social implications and require a decentralised approach. Otherwise, it will be a couple more weeks/months of long discussions on ethics, putting more projects on hold and counting more deaths. 

Reviewing People’s Motivations (to download a contact tracing App)

Austria and India: Two countries, one similar App, same virus but different cultural struggles. From a geographic analysis, they look very similar as they share a border with two of the most infected countries (Italy and China). Therefore, you would expect a higher success rate of downloads, perhaps driven by panic but that’s not the case. 

While in Austria, people might be driven by fear, they are also more respectful of rules and regulations attaining to social distancing thanks to their population density. In India, the motivation to download the App is not dependent on fear but rather smartphone accessibility (58% of the population doesn’t own one). 

On the other spectrum, there is Singapore. One of the most innovative places in the world, considered a smart city by many, technologically advanced in toto. Still, only 20% of the population is using the App and trusting the government.

Interestingly, it’s not the level of technology and adoption that makes the difference in a crisis situation like this one. It’s rather political views, human values and cultural differences that prevent countries to innovate, or in this specific case, safeguard the health of entire populations. 

Closing Remarks

Covid-19 is like digital marketing, it’s in constant evolution. So, we have to move away from our traditional way of testing & learning. A solution to this pandemic may not lay in the use of the most technological systems but in a collective and multi-disciplinary dataset, to be translated into new social norms and cultural habits. 

It’s great to find techy ways to make things safer but we have to make sure we educate everyone first, to increase our chances of tech adoption in the future. Imagine if data privacy wasn’t an issue today, if it was considered a non-essential service/benefit, shifting the weight of essential onto human judgement. 

Perhaps, this is the time to start defining privacy in different ways and for different purposes. Educating our populations that doing a personality test online is just as intrusive as sharing location data. However, one can save your lives, the other one is just for fun. Fun Fact: In the last 30 days, “personality tests” online have been trending up worldwide, +252% above yearly average.

May this quarantine help you understand the critical role of cultural sociologists, anthropologists and social psychologists to find solutions for your global citizens and businesses. AI and machine learning have already thought us that human judgement is a key priority and is not going to be replaced, not even with a virtual ID to track our movements. 

Kind (cultural) regards 

In conclusion, I want to make clear that I’m not opposed to contact tracing Apps. As a data analyst and sociologist, a researcher at heart, the more data the better! But, we have to be careful of not falling for the syndrome of omnipotence, which drives our global society to feel invincible when we are not. Our society is evolving, so we must rely on cultures and human values, more so than technology. This is the time to assess our past and current limitations, while planning for post-pandemic with a team of experts. 

In the meantime, I hope you do a lot more tests. I’m not talking about the A/B testing, but covid-19 diagnostic tests (swabs) and antibody blood test! Allocating most of your National budgets to send swaps to at least 40% of the population, educating people on topics such as public health, civic education and data privacy, while training and re-allocating your workforce into testing centres to scientifically identify and monitor the spread. 

Data Privacy Big Match: EU Parliament 3 - Facebook CEO 1